Is solar power really as cheap as they say it is or do you have to pay more for installation costs than you save on your electric bill?

David Moe


Born in Vancouver, BC
Updated Sep 21


Is solar power really as cheap as they say it is or do you have to pay more for installation costs than you save on your electric bill?


[ltr]I did an economic analysis on a house I owned part of, and discovered the electric company’s prices were lower than anything I could do with solar. The main problem was that the company was BC Hydro which produces most of its power from giant hydroelectric dams, which were much cheaper than solar.[/ltr]


[ltr]The kicker was that when we had a surplus of solar power we could sell it into the grid to BC Hydro at BC’s own production costs, which were much lower than solar, but when we had a deficit, we had to buy power from them at retail price, which was higher.[/ltr]


[ltr]And the second kicker was that coastal BC is overcast and gloomy all winter, and the solar panels generate little or no power just when you need it the most for winter heating. BC hydro’s dams stored a year or more of water, it was raining in the winter, and they just ran it through the turbines when the demand was high. We would have had to use batteries, and the battery bank would have been huge.[/ltr]



[ltr]ADDENDUM: And the third kicker was that BC has huge natural gas reserves in its north, and the gas companies were selling natural gas at 1/3 the cheap rates BC Hydro was selling hydroelectricity at. When I ran the numbers it was a no-brainer on what was the cheapest way to heat the house. An additional factor was that the electric power was always going out during the gales of winter as the big BC trees fell down on the power lines, whereas the underground gas lines always worked. Their backup generators ran on natural gas.[/ltr]