Make no mistake, Canada has some bad weather. In fact there is usually over 100 days of bad weather a year up here in the great white north. Each region is a little different. Places like Vancouver rain a lot while on the east coast like Charlottetown and Halifax there is heaps of snow.
With all of that bad weather it is easy to get down. But with the bad comes a lot of good. Spring and summer are filled with sunny days with the sun’s rays pouring down. Hitting temperatures in places like Toronto of 35+ degrees. It’s estimated that places like Calgary get a whopping 333 days of sun and it basks in bright sunshine for 52% of the time!
In a place like Summerside, PEI there is an average 1,841 hours of sunshine a year. That is a lot of sun for solar panels to harness the available energy and produce electricity for your home. Every province varys but it is typically estimated that an average house in PEI can produce 1,100 kWh/kW of production by going solar even with all those bad weather days.
You may be thinking, well solar is more suitable for places down south which are hot and get a lot of sun like florida and california. However since the cost of solar panels keeps on going down, the availability of solar rebates by agencies like Efficiency NS and Efficiency PEI home owners in places like PEI and Nova Scotia often can generate enough electricity from their roof that it will offset the energy consumption by 80-100%.
Placing the solar panels in the most optimized location on your roof and adjusting for production during bad weather days it is still possible in places that have 100+ days of bad weather a year to produce enough electricity to offset all of their green energy needs.
Net Metering and how it relates to production
Because most residential solar programs are now based on a net metering model it only makes financial sense to install just enough solar panels to cover your expected electricity bill. If you over produce you will not typically be compensated for the extra production.
By having a solar assessment done the quote you get back will have compensated for all of the different variables that may impact your production. It will look at the average weather patterns for the area and adjust production expectations for each month. Summer months will over produce and the power companies like Maritime electric will give you a credit on your electricity bill for the winter months that under produce.
Sunly, a leading solar provider in PEI provides a solar assessment by initially using a google image of your roof to place an optimized # of solar panels and then uses advanced technologies to assess the yearly production they would expect the installation to produce. They have even made the choice to use 144 dual cell Canadian solar panels which have been specifically designed for Canadian weather.
So if you live in sunny California, rainy Vancouver or snowy Summerside don’t get discouraged, solar power is still a great affordable option for a lot of homeowners.
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