Manitoba Hydro Helps Home and Business Owners Harness the Sun

Coinciding with Earth Day, Manitoba Hydro has launched a new program designed to help Manitobans harness the power of the sun. The Power Smart Solar Energy Program offers incentives and financial support for home and business owners to adopt solar power so that they can generate their own electricity and sell excess energy back to Manitoba Hydro.

“Manitoba Hydro has a history of delivering Power Smart programming to help our customers — individual home owners, businesses and industries — conserve energy and reduce their bills,” says Manitoba Hydro President and CEO Kelvin Shepherd. “We want to be involved in these emerging technologies, which are improving and becoming more cost-effective. As the cost-effectiveness improves, these technologies become an increasingly viable option both for Manitoba Hydro and consumers.”

In Winnipeg, a typical single roof-top solar PV module provides approximately 250 watts of power and takes up 1.5 square metres. It produces enough electricity to run your kitchen lights. Installed with a special bi-directional meter, a customer can use the electricity generated from their solar PV panels when they need it or sell it back to Manitoba Hydro when they don’t.

Open to residential and commercial customers, the Solar Energy Program will provide solar PV installations with an incentive of one dollar per watt installed, which will cover roughly 25% of the upfront capital cost of a new installation.

Find out more: https://www.hydro.mb.ca/environment/energy_sources/solar.shtml .

Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.