When Dave Brushett heard about N.B. Power’s recent proposal to introduce a new charge for customers who produce rooftop solar power in New Brunswick, the whole idea rang a bell.
Brushett is chair of Solar Nova Scotia, an industry association with about 80 members operating across the Maritimes. Back in January 2022, he was in crisis mode.
Nova Scotia Power had just proposed a new system access charge for their solar customers, something Brushett said had caused “an immediate freeze of the industry” in that province.
“It was going to have a similar economic outcome to what N.B. Power is proposing in New Brunswick,” Brushett said.
By adding special new fees to monthly bills, about $80 a month in the Nova Scotia case, and upwards of $100 a month in New Brunswick, the proposals threatened to add years to the payback period for new solar investments.
Dave Brushett, chair of Solar Nova Scotia, says there was ‘strong public pushback’ when Nova Scotia Power tried to add fees for residential solar producers. (CBC)
And according to Brushett, that would mean that the growing solar industry in each province would suddenly be at a loss for new customers.
“It’s going to make solar uneconomical for the most part,” he said.
But Nova Scotia’s 2022 proposal didn’t make it very far.
“There was strong public pushback,” said Brushett.
Within days, Premier Tim Houston issued a public statement condemning the idea and promising to pass legislation that would prevent it from happening. On the same day, Nova Scotia Power removed the proposed new fee from its application to the province’s regulator.
N.B. government won’t intervene in process
In New Brunswick, it’s been more than six weeks since N.B. Power submitted its proposed changes to the Energy and Utilities board.
The proposal includes a new demand charge, and adjustments to rates that solar producers pay and get credited.
Solar producers would pay less per kilowatt-hour for the energy they use but would be credited even less for the power they produce.
The demand charge would apply a $13 per kilowatt fee to each customer’s peak power usage in a given month.
Proposed rate changes would see both charges and credits go down for solar customers, resulting in roughly neutral impact on bills. A new demand charge would add new costs every month for solar customers. Source: Sample bill from N.B. Power proposal (CBC)
If approved, the new fee structure would come into effect by 2027 for new solar customers and by 2037 for existing ones.
New Brunswick Energy Minister René Legacy said in an emailed statement that the government will not intervene before the board has ruled on the proposal, sometime in the fall. He encouraged members of the public to participate in the quasi-judicial process.
WATCH | Here’s how a demand charge works:
Want to go solar? Proposed new charge from N.B. Power could make it pricey
N.B. Power wants to make significant changes to its net-metering program, which some say could dampen solar growth in the province.
In a CBC radio Q&A, Premier Susan Holt said decisions over the future of the solar industry should fall to the government, and not the utility.
“If we want to see solar programs and solar adoption grow, then that shouldn’t fall onto N.B. Power,” Holt said.
“It should fall onto the government of New Brunswick, because it’s in our collective best interest to have more renewable, clean, and non-emitting energy.”
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said last week that the government, not N.B. Power, should be responsible for solar growth in the province. (CBC)
In Nova Scotia, the government made their position on solar clear in November 2022, when they passed changes to that province’s electricity legislation.
“Nova Scotians have what’s called the right to self-generate,” Brushett said. “The utility is not allowed to impose any sort of rate structures that would be detrimental to solar customers, such as what’s being proposed in New Brunswick.”
Cost shifting?
N.B. Power’s motivation for proposing a new charge for New Brunswick solar customers is similar to what inspired Nova Scotia Power’s thwarted 2022 changes.
The utility said current solar customers are being subsidized by all other ratepayers, because when they use less power from the grid, they end up covering less of the fixed costs of the electricity system.
A chart showing predicted rate impact from solar growth in New Brunswick, from an April 2026 report by Dunsky Energy + Climate, commissioned by N.B. Power to support its rate design application. (N.B. Power/Dunsky Energy + Climate)
A consultant’s report commissioned by N.B. Power estimates that the reduced revenue from residential solar customers will cost other ratepayers an extra 0.3 cents per kilowatt-hour on their bills by 2040, if the program stays as it is for the next 14 years.
Meanwhile, N.B. Power’s recent rate increase added 0.63 cents per kilowatt hour for all residential customers as of April 14, and the utility plans to add another 1.51 cents per kilowatt hour by 2028.
Regardless of the size of the impact on rates, Brushett disagreed in principle with what the utility calls “cost shifting.”
He pointed to customers who install heat pumps, and then end up buying less power from the utility.
“That person doesn’t have to compensate N.B. Power for lost revenues due to their more efficient heating system,” Brushett said.
“So I think [they’re] just treating solar unfairly relative to other technologies that people are installing in their homes.”
Brushett also said the relative size of rooftop solar in New Brunswick is still small compared with Nova Scotia and P.E.I.
Nova Scotia has about five times as much residential solar production, he said, and P.E.I. has the “highest [capacity] per capita for solar in the country.”
“New Brunswickers need to understand that this direction is really going to make them not really have much of a solar industry at all,” Brushett said. “And that’s an opposite approach [to what] their neighbours are taking.”
Doing the math on N.B. Power’s proposal
Moncton resident Félix Ouellet is also wondering why New Brunswick is taking a different direction than its neighbouring provinces.
“We’re not inventing something new here in New Brunswick, having residential homes that produce electricity,” Ouellet said.
Félix Ouellet created a website to show how N.B. Power’s proposed changes would impact his household, based on a year of energy consumption data. (Mathieu Bernier/Radio-Canada)
“This is duplicated everywhere on the planet.”
Ouellet has done the math on what N.B. Power’s proposed net metering changes will mean for New Brunswickers.
The business administration teacher and Université de Moncton lecturer installed a 16.4-kilowatt system on his family home in 2024. He recently created a website using a year’s worth of data from his system, showing the impacts of the proposal.
Ouellet’s analysis compared what his bills would have been for the past year without solar, under the current system, and with proposed changes by N.B. Power. (CBC)
Once a 10-year grandfathering period is over, Ouellet said his annual costs would more than double under the proposed system.
And if someone were looking to build a new system similar to his, the proposed fees would more than double the expected payback period, moving it from 12.4 years to 32.4 years.
With the expected lifetime of most solar systems around 25 to 30 years, that means that financially, “it doesn’t make sense at all,” Ouellet said.
New Brunswick’s current group of roughly 2,100 solar producers “may be the only ones in 10 years that have solar,” Ouellet said.
“We need way more to make a difference, right?”
“The more we have those mini electricity power plants in our community, the better off we will be in generations to come.”
