A year of two halves, with no way to bridge them
At this latitude the difference between midsummer and midwinter production is larger than almost anywhere else this site covers. Summer days are extraordinarily long; winter days are short, and the sun sits very low even at noon.
In a market with net metering, that pattern is workable: summer surplus accumulates as credit and is drawn down through the winter, which is exactly what Maine, Montana and Vermont households rely on.
Yukon has no such bridge available to a new system. With micro-generation intakes paused since December 2023, summer surplus is not credited, not banked and not paid for. It is lost.
So the seasonal swing stops being an accounting problem and becomes a physical one: the only summer generation worth anything is what your household consumes in the hour it is produced.
What that implies for size and storage
It implies a smaller array than the roof could hold and than an annual consumption figure would justify, because capacity that produces into an already-satisfied household adds nothing.
It also raises the value of storage well above its usual level. A battery is the only mechanism available for moving generation from a productive hour into a consuming one, since the grid will not do it for you.
Ask for the system modelled with and without storage, and ask specifically what share of annual generation the model expects to be used rather than lost. That share is the whole of the return.
Ask what the model assumes for winter. If it shows meaningful December or January output at this latitude, it is not describing Dawson City.
The diesel context, and why it cuts both ways
Yukon Energy operates diesel back-up generation serving Dawson City, alongside Whitehorse, Mayo, Callison and Faro, for periods when hydro supply from the interconnected grid runs short.
That means displaced electricity here can be displacing diesel generation rather than hydro, which is a stronger environmental argument than exists in a purely hydro-supplied community.
It cuts the other way on timing, though. Diesel back-up is most needed in the cold, dark months of high demand, which are precisely the months a solar array produces least.
So the emissions benefit is real but it does not line up neatly with when the array is working. That is worth understanding rather than overstating in either direction.
What actually remains in the arithmetic
The Good Energy rebate, at $800 per kilowatt of generating capacity to a maximum of $5,000, applied territory-wide regardless of which utility serves the community.
The electricity your household consumes as it is generated, valued at your retail rate, which is the only ongoing return available while intakes remain paused.
Nothing from the federal government: the Clean Technology investment tax credit is restricted to a taxable Canadian corporation or a real estate investment trust under Income Tax Act subsection 127.45(1), so a homeowner cannot claim it however the purchase is financed.
And nothing for export. Ask for a projection built on those terms, and treat any quote showing export revenue as describing a programme you cannot currently join.