Net metering connection

Net metering is the arrangement most people picture when they picture home solar: your array offsets what you use, and anything left over goes to the grid for a credit. In Ontario the details of that credit matter a great deal, and two of them catch people out.

How the credit works. Your distributor gives you a credit on your electricity bill for the renewable electricity you sent to the grid. The Ontario Energy Board is explicit about the limits: credits can only be used to offset charges related to your electricity consumption, meaning the kilowatt hours you used, and cannot be applied to other types of charges (Ontario Energy Board, Net metering). Your bill also carries fixed distribution charges, regulatory charges and the like, and a credit does not touch those. A household that generates more than it uses over a year still gets a bill.

The 12-month expiry. This is the second one. Credits can only be carried over to future bills for up to 12 months, after which they are reduced to zero (Ontario Energy Board, Net metering). Hydro Ottawa states the same thing in its own words: the credit cannot be redeemed for cash or as payment for other services, and any credit remaining after 12 months of its occurrence expires (Hydro Ottawa, Types of DERs). The practical consequence is that oversizing an array beyond your own annual consumption does not bank value. It donates it. Sizing to your actual annual kilowatt hours is not conservatism, it is arithmetic.

Step one: the eligibility condition. You must be generating renewable electricity primarily for your own use, and you must enter into a net metering agreement with your utility. You apply to the utility to connect the system to their grid and meet their technical, safety and inspection requirements (Ontario Energy Board, Net metering).

Step two: Hydro Ottawa's process. Residential solar falls under micro-generation at 12 kW AC or less. You submit a service request form indicating net metering capability. Hydro Ottawa responds with a service layout setting out responsibilities and a quotation for their own work, normally within 15 days and up to 60 days for a complex project. Payment is required before work commences and a service layout remains valid for 90 days. Coordination and energization follow, and nothing is energized until all preparatory work is finished and the Electrical Safety Authority Connection Authorization has been received (Hydro Ottawa, DER connection process).

Step three: the ESA. The notification of work has to be filed before the electrical work begins, and if you are hiring, the electrical work must be done by a Licensed Electrical Contractor (Electrical Safety Authority, Notifications and inspections). The Connection Authorization is the gate on energization, so delays there delay everything downstream.

How long it takes. Fifteen days is the stated floor for a service layout response and 60 is the stated ceiling for a complex one. Realistically, allow two to four months from application to an energized system, assuming the engineering and the permit are already in hand. The paperwork, not the roof, sets the schedule.

What the credit is worth. Under the Regulated Price Plan effective 1 November 2025, time-of-use prices are 9.8 cents per kilowatt hour off-peak, 15.7 mid-peak and 20.3 on-peak, while the tiered option is 12.0 cents for the first block and 14.2 above it, with the residential threshold at 1,000 kilowatt hours a month from 1 November to 30 April and 600 from 1 May to 31 October (Ontario Energy Board, Electricity rates). Solar generates in the middle of the day, so a fair blended value for an Ottawa array is somewhere in the low to middle teens of cents per kilowatt hour rather than the on-peak headline. Work your own numbers from your actual bill and your actual plan.

What it costs to connect. Hydro Ottawa's charges for the connection work itself come back in the service layout quotation, so the number is specific to your property and nobody can quote it in advance. Budget an allowance rather than a figure. The ESA notification fee and the engineer's work are separate again. An installer who presents a single all-in number without these itemised is hiding variance rather than absorbing it.

The decision that comes first. Ontario's Home Renovation Savings rebate for solar and battery storage is for load-displacement systems only, and its own terms state that participants who receive an incentive for solar PV and battery storage are not eligible to participate in a net metering agreement with their local distribution company (Home Renovation Savings, solar and battery storage). The participant agreement puts it more bluntly still: if you receive the rebate you must not enter into a net metering agreement at any time in connection with the measures installed, and breaching that requires repaying the full rebate to the IESO within 30 days (Home Renovation Savings, Solar and Storage Participant Agreement). So net metering and the rebate are alternatives, and choosing one forecloses the other. Decide before the system is designed, because the right size differs.

What to ask before you sign. Have you modelled my annual consumption, and is the array sized to it rather than to my roof. What happens to credits I do not use within 12 months. Which rate plan am I on and which suits an array on this roof. Who submits the service request and who pays the distributor's connection quotation. Who obtains the ESA Connection Authorization. What is your estimate of the calendar time to energization, and what have you assumed about the utility's queue. Am I giving up the rebate by going this route, and have you shown me both cases side by side.