N.S. Power’s proposed fee for solar homeowners gets pushback from installers

HALIFAX — A Nova Scotia Power proposal to charge fees for customers who sell power back to the grid has drawn criticism from solar installers who say it will damage the emerging industry.

The utility applied Thursday before the Utility and Review Board for a monthly fee of about $8 per kilowatt of electricity, which in a typical 10-kilowatt photovoltaic solar installation would amount to about $960 annually.

David Brushett, the chairman of Solar Nova Scotia, said this would be a massive reduction of a typical homeowner’s revenue of about $1,800 annually from a 10-kilowatt photovoltaic installation — and would nearly double the time needed for a homeowner to earn back the cost of installing the system.

“The fee would make solar not feasible for just about everybody,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday.

Nova Scotia Power vicepresident David Landrigan said on Friday it’s fair to apply the monthly fee for people who are selling their excess power back to the system — referred to as “net metering” — because the utility bears the cost of ensuring all customers have access to a reliable source of electricity.

He said without the fee, homeowners who generate electricity are effectively being subsidized by other customers on the Nova

Scotia Power system who don’t have the panels and are paying full rates.

The executive said the company has to build a system to provide enough power at peak times in winter months — during periods when solar panels usually aren’t sufficient to supply the needs of homeowners.

“We would get more energy from solar in the summer when we don’t have as much energy usage … There’s no solar at the time when the [electricity] is needed to keep the power on in Nova Scotia,” he said.

Landrigan said that without the fee, non-solar customers would be providing a subsidy totalling about $55 million from 2022 to 2030, roughly equivalent to a four per cent increase in the average residential rate.

Yohan Peiris, owner of Renewly Solar Inc. of Halifax, said his business is already suffering the effects of the proposal, which is not scheduled to be before the regulator until this fall. His business has 15 clients who have put down $5,000 deposits, and they are now asking questions about whether the cost of the system they’ve signed on for could be changed by the regulator. The Nova Scotia Power monthly fee, if approved as proposed, would apply retroactively to people who install solar systems beginning next month.

“It will directly impact people’s decision to go solar. They basically won’t do it,” said Peiris.