Via the Cochrane Eagle:
Why is home solar generation limited to personal use in Alberta?
Thanks to decreasing costs and accessible grant programs, the number of Albertans with home solar panels has grown exponentially. While some people are content just getting a break on their energy bills, many look at rooftop solar systems and envision pumping electricity back into the province’s power grid — and generating extra cash in the process.
The question often comes up in the beginning stages of conversations with new customers, Sauer said: Is it possible to max out my home and become a net supplier of electricity? The first hurdle in plans to become a small-scale power plant is regulatory. Under Alberta’s micro-generation regulations, home electricity production is only intended to offset your own annual energy consumption.
Over-sizing is attractive to customers because the more solar you install, the lower the price of each installed watt. Some people also imagine that when the system is paid off, then there is an opportunity to generate revenue, Sauer said. Which brings us to the second, and more serious challenge. Our electrical infrastructure wasn’t really designed to accommodate solar panels on every roof sending power back into the grid. If a neighbourhood or a street is serviced by a 100 kVA transformer, that is the limiting factor. Within those capacity limits, the issue becomes one of fairness and equity.
“You could have 10 10-kilowatt systems connected that transformer. Or you could have 25-kilowatt systems connected to that transformer. At the end of the day, it's the same,” Sauer said.
“From my perspective, personally, I'd like to see more people have the ability to connect and offset their consumption than one or two or three people have the ability to put two or three times the size of system on and take up that capacity.”
