Solar panels added to N.S. affordable housing complex giving residents big break on power bills

Residents of an affordable housing complex in Sydney, N.S., are getting their power bills cut by more than 50 per cent thanks to a field of solar panels.

New Dawn Enterprises CEO Erika Shea said the average power bill for housing units at its Pine Tree Park subdivision used to be about $368 a month.

She said they will now be about $200 a month lower when electricity starts flowing from the neighbourhood solar garden in the next few weeks.

"Those savings go right to the folks who are paying the rent, and so we've moved to an all-inclusive model of rent that includes utilities that range between $125 and $150 a month," Shea said after a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday.

The housing units had to be renovated first, which is helping cut electricity use.

"One of our big learnings is that until you've done that energy efficiency work, it is uneconomical to transition to renewables, so the first step has got to be making sure that your home is airtight [and] that you're using a high-efficiency heat pump," she said.

The Pine Tree Park residents are the first in Nova Scotia to subscribe to the province's new Community Solar Program, which sets out how much Nova Scotia Power pays for the green energy and provides users with a credit of two cents per kilowatt hour of electricity.

During the ribbon cutting, Shea referred to a study last year by Efficiency One, which found that 43 per cent of households in Nova Scotia are struggling to pay their power bills and that nine of the top 10 communities hardest hit are in Cape Breton.

"As we've been learning about renewables and simultaneously the depth of energy poverty, for us it's really important as we think about affordable housing to think in that same breath of affordable energy," she said.

Three years ago, the federal government announced it was putting $1.8 million into New Dawn's solar garden, with help from the Verschuren Centre at Cape Breton University.

At the time, it was intended to be part of a net-zero energy community, but Shea said the program requirements changed, so New Dawn had to wait for the new community solar program to get the project up and running.

The province has kicked in an additional $475,000 for the Pine Tree Park project and has set aside another $5.2 million to help with the capital costs of community solar gardens at other locations.

NewDawn's project is expected to generate up to 555 kilowatts of energy to power 29 residential and commercial subscribers at the Pine Tree Park subdivision.

Shea said discussions on the project actually began in 2018, so it's been a long time in the works.

"Six years later, [we're] delighted that the array is finished and it is prepped to power the community," she said.

And New Dawn is working on a feasibility study with plans to build more solar gardens that could help low-income people, even if they are not in any of New Dawn's affordable housing units.

Earlier this year, CBRM council was told about several other subscription solar projects that are in the works.

The province says New Dawn's solar garden is the first project of its kind in the country.

Julia Lindsay, community solar project manager with the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables, said the program is aimed at people who can't put solar panels on the roof of their home.

"This type of program is really, really unique and unprecedented, as far as we are aware in Canada, because there's no buy-in fee," she said.

"It's really designed to be an accessible program and as equitable as possible. It has been designed to avoid or mitigate any impact on the overall ratepayers in Nova Scotia."