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A 30-year payback for rooftop solar sounds terrible. And that’s exactly why we need to be careful with numbers.
I’ve been thinking about this after reading reports about an internal Natural Resources Canada memo examining the economics of residential rooftop solar.
The number getting attention is 30 years.
Put that number in a headline by itself and the conclusion almost writes itself: rooftop solar doesn’t make economic sense in Canada.
Except that’s not actually what the numbers say.
The federal analysis reportedly models payback periods ranging from 10 to 30 years. That range matters because Canada isn’t one electricity market.
We have different electricity prices, incentives, net-metering rules, installation costs and utility relationships across provinces and even individual service territories. A homeowner looking at solar in Quebec can face a very different economic equation from someone in Ontario, Alberta or Nova Scotia.
So yes, a 30-year payback deserves scrutiny.
But so does a 10-year payback.
This is something I think we need to be particularly conscious of when reporting on an industry like solar, where a single number can quickly become the narrative.
Numbers need context.
Otherwise, technically accurate information can still leave people with the wrong impression.
We took a closer look at the memo, the numbers behind the headline, and what they actually tell us about the economics of residential solar in Canada.
There’s a much more interesting story here than “solar takes 30 years to pay for itself.”
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CONTINUE TO OUR ANALYSIS →
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