SaskPower customer unhappy about bill after generating more solar power in month than she used

Tera Ebach installed solar panels on her Saskatoon home to lower her ecological footprint. She wishes her power provider had more attractive measures to entice others to do the same. 

Ebach is part of SaskPower's net metering program — which allows customers to generate their own electricity with solar panels and receive credit for any excess they generated for the provincial grid.

From March 1 to April 5, she produced more power with her solar panels than she used — meaning she overall ended up providing power to the utility company — but still ended up having to pay $74.50 on her monthly bill.

"Part of the reason for getting the solar panels is to reduce my expenses by using renewable energy," Ebach said.

"I think it's really important that SaskPower look at an option which is maybe not the absolute most profitable [option], but something that is going to do the most amount of good for the most amount of people."

Switching to solar power hasn't been cheap for Ebach. After incentives, she paid $9,000 to install 14 solar panels on her roof.

Ebach said she then had to pay hundreds of dollars to apply to be part of the net-metering program and to switch out her old meter.

Through the current net-metering program, any excess energy sent to the grid is credited at 7.5 cents/kWH. This is about half of what the previous iteration of the program paid.

Ebach says she understands there are costs to maintaining SaskPower infrastructure, but thinks the current net-metering rates are unfair.

"It seems like it's a system that does not encourage people to sign up for it, " Ebach said

"Instead of where they [SaskPower] are getting a 50 per cent margin, maybe it should be more like a 25 per cent margin, or just something more comparable. I think there would be a lot more uptake from people wanting to get involved in the program and it's a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption like gas power. "

Ebach called SaskPower to complain about her rates. She said the response she got from a manager was shocking.

"He was very point blank about how [SaskPower] lose money from homeowners having solar panels, so we've got no interest in making our net metering program attractive to people,"  Ebach said.

Nathan Hoffart, SaskPower's manager of customer solutions, said the Crown corporation changed its net metering rates because the previous iteration was unsustainable and non-net metering customers had to pay for the deficit.