Support program aims to expand rooftop solar in Toronto and beyond

In April, The Atmospheric Fund launched its Solar Accelerator Program, which connects homeowners in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area with a free solar advisory service. A Whitby homeowner has now gone through the process — beginning to end.

When Bruce Elliott first looked at installing solar on the roof of his Whitby home a few years ago, he found it costly, confusing and overwhelming. He gave up at the time — but fast forward a few years, and on an afternoon in July, dozens of panels are being hoisted onto his roof. A couple of things changed for Elliott.

When he initially looked at solar, he wanted a battery backup along with it, which he said didn’t give him enough storage for the cost. Since then, he bought an electric Ford F-150, with a battery big enough to store the extra power. When a planned outage cut power for 30 hours, his truck was able to keep the lights on and the fridge running.

Next time there is an outage — planned or not — Elliott’s home will run off the energy harnessed by the solar panels on his roof. In early July, summer thunderstorms in Ontario left over 150,000 customers without power. The other thing that changed was the support available to Elliott.

In April, The Atmospheric Fund launched its Solar Accelerator Program, which connects homeowners in Elliot’s area with a free solar advisory service. Elliott learned about the program at a local energy expo. After reaching out to The Atmospheric Fund, he was connected with an advisor who led him through the process of assessing whether rooftop solar would work at his home, all the way to installation.

The program is aiming to address the exact gap it filled for Elliott, and has now connected with about 400 people. Chris Caners, the non-profit’s director of clean energy, said that, along with the advisory service and offering “jargon-free, really easy to access information,” The Atmospheric Fund is working to reduce the soft costs of the solar industry to increase adoption and make the industry more viable. Considered “invisible costs,” they are all the non-hardware expenses associated with solar.

“Installers are having to knock on doors, trying to drum up business when that's not really what we want installers to be doing ... we want installers to be installing solar,” he said, while noting that the price of solar and storage is expected to go down. Educating customers, and therefore reducing those soft costs, works both ways.

Caners says The Atmospheric Fund is “helping to educate customers and get them to the point where they understand what they want and can specify that and choose confidently,” which benefits the installer as well. The program hopes to reach 1,000 people total. When assessing if solar is right for the person, Caners said there are certain things the advisor will look out for.

Old roofs, for example — “because if you want to replace the roof in the near future, you don't want to take the solar off, because that's expensive and hard to do.” They also look at how shady the roof is and how much space it has. They also talk with the person interested in solar about potential rebates, such as through the provincial Home Renovation Savings Program.

That program only offers rebates if you install both solar and battery storage, and doesn’t allow you to feed the power back into the grid — a key benefit and incentive for installing home solar. In Elliott’s case, the advisor collected his hydro bills and got pictures of his house. She looked at it on Google Earth, and came up with a rough solar panel layout.

After that, she tendered out the project for bids from solar companies and came back to Elliott with quotes. She explained the benefits of each install, which he said beat his previous attempt (a Google search). The advisor also calculated what Elliott’s power bill would be if he installed solar panels, which was the main motivator for Elliott and his wife, along with the climate benefits.

Last February, they had an $800 power bill, and now most months, their bills will be under $100. January and February are the only times their bills are expected to go above that. The Elliotts have gradually electrified their house: they swapped their gas furnace out for a heat pump and electric furnace and replaced their gas fireplace with an electric one.

In the winter, Elliott works as a ski instructor and commutes to the ski hill, so a significant amount of their monthly power in the winter goes towards charging his EV truck. Overall, 81 per cent of their electricity use is expected to be offset by the solar panels, which will cover all of their spring, summer and fall electricity, along with a chunk of their winter, said Elliott. When the panels are absorbing more energy than they can use, they’ll feed that power back into the grid and get credited for it — a process called net metering.

“When we're feeding it back to the grid, it's our neighbours that will use it first ... we're actually greening up our whole little community,” he said.