Halifax condo residents face obstacles trying to go green with solar panels

Kate Porter is a condo resident in the Armdale neighbourhood of Halifax who wants to join the fight against climate change, but says complex provincial regulations on electricity are holding her back.

Porter and some of her neighbours in the condo want to install solar panels but when the condo board brought the idea to Nova Scotia Power, the utility said the rules it must follow prevent collective ownership of solar panels.

Residents say that puts solar-panel systems out of reach for people who can't afford to buy their own.

"I'm mostly confused. It doesn't make a lot of sense," Porter said in an interview with CBC. 

"It definitely would have helped me save money on my power bills but also, it would have maybe made me feel like I was doing a little bit more of my part to help out with the climate change situation," she said. 

Scott Hart is the president of the condo's board. In an email, he said that the current Nova Scotia Power regulations only allow access to solar energy on individual accounts. He said the condo hoped to install the panels collectively.

"But because the condo corps account is only used for a few parking lot lights, they wouldn't give us approval for panels that produced more power than that account used," he said. 

He said the residents are allowed to install solar on an individual, unit-by-unit basis.

"But then we are stuck with jurisdiction — the condo corp owns the roof and is responsible for upkeep, repairs and maintenance. If the shingles need to be done, it would be up to the individual owner to move and store their panels while we do the work," he said.

"It would be much easier if the condo corp owned them and did it all together in a planned way."

But Tony Hall, the owner of Podium Properties, said it does not have to be that complicated.

Podium Properties manages the Royalton, an apartment building in Halifax where solar panels were installed 15 years ago. Hall said the panels are used differently than most in the solar industry.

The solar panels are located on the building's south-facing lawn and are used to pre-heat the building's water, so it's an internal system owned by the condo board and is a shared expense among the residents.

Hall told CBC in an interview that the panels were installed to reduce the condo's carbon footprint and to reduce costs. He said the resident's have seen a drop in their bills of up to 20 per cent.

"It's a steady saving compared to other buildings of similar sizes and I think it's a source of pride," he said. 

He said the system is seamless and runs itself, and he recommends that other condos look into solar energy.

"There's obviously the greening which is a great thing for the future," he said. "But also I think that it's how quickly people see the savings which is really the driving fact."

Hall says he would like to see the government and service providers make solar panel operations easier for condos so more people would do it. 

"I think that the future is in the simplicity of all," he said. "When they see the benefit and the cost, that'll take the confusion out of everything."

New provincial program in the works

The Nova Scotia government is aiming to address this issue, said Patricia Jreige, Natural Resources and Renewables spokesperson, in an emailed statement.

"Government is always looking to expand solar installations," she said.

The upcoming community solar program, she said, is expected to be implemented later this year.

Phil MacKenzie runs MacKenzie Solar Engineering, a solar consulting and installation company. He said that there are many technical complications when it comes to installing solar panels on condo buildings because usually, each unit has its own power meter. 

"It's challenging from an accounts perspective, metering perspective, and from the regulation side of things," he said. 

Complications arise

"They've set in place a couple of ground rules for solar projects and as long as you are able to stay within the confines of that framework, then you can get a solar project going, but sometimes it's just not possible," he said. 

MacKenzie said he hasn't worked on many of these types of projects, "but on projects that I've looked at for condominiums, it does get complicated quickly where you have multiple account holders with one single roof."

Polycorp, a Nova Scotia real estate developer, started a petition to ask political leaders to allow multi-unit buildings to install solar panels because it, too, is running into roadblocks.

In an emailed statement, Nova Scotia Power spokesperson Mia Atia said another option is for customers to subscribe to its community solar garden program, the first of which is in Amherst. That's where N.S. Power installed 4,500 solar panels to generate green electricity for the provincial power grid.