BC Hydro net billing, explained.

What changed

For years, BC Hydro’s net metering program credited every kilowatt-hour your solar exported at the same rate you paid for power. The grid worked like a perfect battery. That program has been replaced by net billing, and the difference matters for how you design a system.

Under net billing there are now two different values for your solar energy:

• Solar you use in your own home offsets electricity you’d otherwise buy, worth the full retail rate, roughly 12.5¢/kWh blended.
• Solar you export to the grid earns a credit of about 10¢/kWh.

That ~2.5¢ gap sounds small, but across a summer of exports it adds up, and it rewards a very specific strategy.

The strategy: use your own sunshine

The system that wins under net billing is one that keeps as much solar as possible working inside your home at full retail value, and exports only the true surplus. Three things push your self-use up:

• A home battery. Instead of exporting your midday surplus for 10¢. The battery stores it and serves it back in the evening at full value. This is the single biggest lever: with storage, roughly 60% or more of your production can stay on-site.
• Load shifting. Running the dishwasher, laundry, and hot water in daylight hours means the sun pays for them directly.
• EV charging on solar. An EV is a huge flexible load, charging it from your roof soaks up surplus that would otherwise export at the lower rate.

A worked example

Take a Victoria home with a $175/month BC Hydro bill (about 1,400 kWh/month). A system sized around 14 kW produces roughly 14,700 kWh a year here. With a battery keeping ~60% of that on-site:

• ~8,800 kWh offsets retail power at 12.5¢ → about $1,100/year
• ~5,900 kWh exports at 10¢ → about $590/year
• Year-one value: about $1,700, growing every year as BC Hydro rates rise (~3%/year historically).

Run your own numbers with your real bill in our Savings Estimator, it uses exactly this math.

What it means for system design

Under old net metering, the advice was “size as big as your roof allows.” Under net billing, smart design matters more: sizing to your actual usage, pairing with storage, and planning loads. That’s design work, and it’s why a proper consultation beats a postcard quote.