New rooftop solar program falls short for some

As it had hoped, Minister Dustin Duncan and SaskPower have unveiled a new rooftop solar program before the end of October, but not everyone is happy with how the new program looks.

The new net metering program won’t have any limit on program capacity, no set end date and no specific contract length. It’s set to start Nov. 1.

However, the government is removing the rebate for equipment and installation, and people in the program will be able to offset their own power use at the same rate. But they will only get 7.5 cents per kilowatt for excess energy put back into the grid, rather than the 14 cents in the previous program.

“It’s certainly my hope that this is going to provide sustainability for the industry, that they have a program that they can take forward to their potential customers, while at the same time ensuring that we’re not passing onto customers that don’t have solar panels more cost to upkeep the grid,” Duncan, the minister responsible for SaskPower, said Tuesday.

Duncan said in creating the program, SaskPower had to consider the interests of people wanting to use rooftop solar and everyone else who doesn’t have or can’t afford the panels. He explained that, building into the kilowatt cost, is an amount to deal with the cost of the transmission and distribution system.

“If you still have those same costs and less people paying that bill then that’s going to be passed on to other customers,” said Duncan. “So, we’re trying to balance out in having a program that kind of meets those two criteria, of reducing your SaskPower bill, of having a green energy option, while also ensuring that we’re not unnecessarily passing on more of the cost of the system to people that just cannot afford solar panels of their own.”

Duncan said other provinces either have already or are in the process of moving away from rebates for solar equipment and away from the one-to-one credits for power generation.

According to Duncan, the old program would have had a net negative impact to SaskPower of about $54 million by 2025, but this program will be much less — between $4 million and $5 million.

Duncan said SaskPower heard from the industry to come back as soon as possible with a program, and he hopes this will provide sustainability for the industry. He said it’s now the job of the industry to go out and sell this new program to its customers.

Acknowledging that SaskPower is still working on its goal to have 50 per cent of generation from renewables by 2030, Duncan said this is part of a larger conversation about where distributive energy fits in with SaskPower.

“As we see more and more customers self-generate, it might in the future allow SaskPower to make some decisions in terms of not having to generate as much power as they need, but I think we’re still in our infancy in terms of our distributive energy,” said Duncan.

NDP shaking its head

The Sask. NDP’s leader, Ryan Meili, predicted the death of solar power in the province from this program, saying a lot of people will be out of work.

“We’ve basically seen, with the stroke of a pen, the Sask. Party decide to kill this industry, and we’re calling for them today to get back, at the very least, to the previous program and return net metering, get back to the rebate,” said Meili.

Meili said the new program doesn’t make any sense, and that the industry has said that a larger, one-to-one credit for excess power is what’s needed for the program to be economically viable.

“(Duncan) essentially made it so that any homeowner who wants to put up panels would take up to twice as long to pay it back, which effectively prices everybody in the small part of the solar production industry — the homeowners, the farms, the small businesses, the small towns — out of the market and effectively kill this industry that’s been growing and should be growing,” Meili said.

Meili pumped up the NDP’s plan for solar in Renew Saskatchewan, and said that he was looking to put solar panels in himself but with the new program it’s just not affordable.

Solar energy company responds

Bradyn Parisian, owner of Mo’ Solar Company in Regina, isn’t pleased with SaskPower’s changes to the net metering program that eliminates the one-to-one credit for power being returned to the grid.

“The changes that have been made actually make it far more difficult for the industry sector to operate in a successful fashion,” he said. “A one-to-one net metering credit system is a base level of requirement for supporting the industry and allowing it to grow and thrive.”

Parisian said that he doesn’t think the program is good enough to entice enough new customers to solar power. Without new customers he won’t be able to re-hire the two employees that he recently had to lay off.

“I’m going to be a bit of a prophet here and forecast that although they’ve given us a product, it’s a piece of garbage and it’s going to be very difficult to sell that piece of garbage to customers, let alone many customers,” he said.

“So I see myself and my competitors being basically pushed into a corner. As far as re-hiring, it’s probably not going to happen. We have a few projects that will get us through for the next little while, but we will have to dial back our team.”

Parisian points to Manitoba as an example of the drastic impact the elimination of the one-to-one credit could have on Saskatchewan’s solar industry.

“Based on my perspectives and what we’ve seen in other localities, the closest example would be Manitoba, where they eliminated a one-to-one net metering credit and the industry died. They lost 95 per cent of the activity in that space and the sector is all but dead. You are just going to simply have out-of-province firms competing for SaskPower utility-scale projects,” he said.

“So if the original mission was to kill any incumbent Saskatchewan players from growing to a level where they could bid on those products and build a livelihood in solar, mission accomplished. Thank you very much.”

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Harrison Brooks