Part I : The part where I brag about an expensive purchase I just made
What if If I told you that my household had some savings, on account that our mortgage was paid off, and we decided to use that money towards renovating our kitchen. You would know that this would be a formidable project as many kitchen renovations are expensive with many projects costing between 20K and 50K. While you might have private thoughts wondering why I might be dropping this particular bit of information in our conversation, you probably wouldn’t think that the project itself was out of the ordinary.
I say this to prime you with a comparator to frame what I am going to disclose next: instead of spending lots of money on a new kitchen, my family took advantage of the last days of the Canadian Government’s Greener Home Loan program, and took out a 10-year interest-free loan to pay for an almost 30K solar panel system on our garage.
Again, this might raise thoughts about the appropriateness of bringing up the topic of spending a considerable amount of money in public.
So please let me share with you the why I am telling you all this.
Those who study human behaviour have reported that when a fire alarm sounds within a public building, the majority of people will not get up to head towards the emergency exit unless they see other people heading towards those doors first.
Now let’s talk about climate change.
There is no lack of alarms being sounded by scientists, journalists, artists and frankly everyone else who has the fortitude to face the dark mountain of evidence before us that the planet is warming faster than we can cope. But most people — and, in turn, most politicians — don’t seem to be reacting to these alarms. It is as if they are waiting for everyone else to move first.
There is a reason why there are people who defend the status quo by labelling those who are trying to change social norms for the better as virtue signalling. Whether they realize it or not, when people try to shame you for letting others know that you can make small contribute towards a better outcome to someone other than yourself, they are trying to stop a social cascade.
In a 2014 study, Yale economist Kenneth Gillingham and a colleague looked at the adoption of residential solar installations in Connecticut and found that it spread through neighborhoods in a “wave-like centrifugal pattern.” A subsequent study, by economist Stefano Carattini, then at Yale, and two colleagues, documented the same phenomenon in Switzerland. And when I dropped by the offices of Brooklyn Solarworks, the folks there showed me a map of where they’d installed panels. Sure enough, it was all epidemiological hot spots—you see empty streets with no solar at all, then blocks that are simply crammed with it, neighbors next to neighbors with arrays.
This makes sense, right? We’re social animals. Whether it’s fashion or jokes or political views, we take cues from those around us. Social influence is particularly useful, though, when a life decision is expensive. Solar may save you money in the long run, but up front it’s the price of a car, which can give one pause. “There’s some uncertainty. You don’t know exactly how things are going to play out,” Carattini tells me. So we gain confidence when someone near us takes the plunge. It also helps when they’re similar to us. Carattini found that when farms put up solar arrays, it spreads to other farms, and the same thing happens with corporations. Like attracts like.
This is why I am telling you that I have taken the plunge and I have invested in solar power.
Part II : The part where you watch a video of someone else who convinces you that the transition to solar power is common sense and what a frugal Midwesterner would do
You should watch the whole video.
Part III : How much does cheap electricity cost (in Ontario)
In the 2020 WIRED Magazine piece that is quoted in Part I, Clive Thomson tells the reader that due to some very generous incentives, he was on track to re-coup his solar panel costs in only seven years. This means that next year, Thomson will pay next to nothing for the electricity used by his brownstone in New York City.
Unfortunately for me, I missed the period in which the federal government was giving grants to subsidize solar panels. While I take some comfort that I was able to manage securing an interest-free Canada Greener Homes loan, so the panels don’t have to pay for amortized interest payments to a bank, I recognize that the length of time it will take for my panels to start making a profit doesn’t make them a compelling investment vehicle.
In Ontario, you are able to connect your solar panels with the local grid and be compensated for any excess electricity that flows into the grid as a credit off your your electricity bill. There are three major restrictions that apply to net metering:
- Credits can only be carried over for up to 12 months;
- You are not allowed to install more solar panels that would generate more electricity than you would normally consume; and
- You cannot sign up for net-metering if you take advantage of the Ontario government’s current 5K rebates towards solar panels and batteries
Another thing that’s good to know is that if you opt to connect to the electrical grid rather than an on-site battery, is you are considered a part of the grid. If your local grid goes down, then then your solar inverter will also shut down. This is by design to ensure that there are no live-wires that can endanger workers who are addressing the power outage. If you live in a place where the grid is unreliable, you are more likely to opt for solar + battery storage. Where I live, the grid is very reliable so I’ve opted for net-metering.
The main advantage of net-metering arises from the condition that electricity rates are set according to TOU or Time of Use. Solar generation of electricity occurs when the sun is up and the price of electricity are at their highest, due to commercial and industrial demands and use. Consumers can maximize their savings by engaging in peak electrical use (use as charging an eV or using the washer and dryer) after 7pm or on weekends, when electricity is cheapest. On-peak is 20.3 ¢/kWh; Off-peak is 9.8 ¢/kWh.
I don’t know yet how long it will take for panels to generate 30K in electricity credits, but it is likely to around 20 years or so when they start paying for themselves. One of the reasons why I invested in solar panels last summer, is that I was betting that electrical costs were going to will go up, if just to prop up our sudden need for more data centres.
And I was right.
Electricity costs in Ontario have already gone up almost 30% from the when I first commissioned the panels last August to the time when they were built in December.
And yet, my solar panels will not provide my household any added financial benefit from this increase in value of the electricity that I will be harvesting from the sun.
Friends in Ontario: did you know that our provincial government spends over $6 billion subsidizing our electricity costs? In 2023, that was more money spent than for Long-Term Care homes in the province.
The 2022-23 provincial budget earmarked $6.3 billion for “electricity cost-relief programs,” nearly four times as much as the $1.6 billion Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals budgeted for such programs in 2018…
… The electricity cost-relief budget is now more than the combined budgets of the ministries of economic development, environment, agriculture, northern development, mining, natural resources, forestry, Indigenous affairs and labour, training and skills development.
And… did you know that this $6B rebate is likely going to increase to $8.5B as the Ontario Electricity Rebate (OER) increased from 13.1% to 23.5% in order to cover the 29% rate increase to our electricity rates that occurred on November 1, 2025? The Ontario government will spend as much what it currents spends on all of its universities and colleges on subsidizing electricity costs for consumers, so we don’t notice anything.
Our rates are going up because our our electricity costs are going up, because we the Ontario government has opted not to invest in solar, which is now the cheapest source of energy in the world.
This is what Ontario is building instead: more nuclear power instead of energy independence.
Part IV: For those who live near me
We acquired our solar panels from Green Sun Rising who also installed them. They spend most summers up North working on various diesel reduction projects. I recommend them for your future solar project.
If you live in Windsor, Ontario and would like to know more about our local electrical infrastructure, I have a 2021 tour of our part of the electrical grid. Please know that while basics still hold but many of the details need updating.
Please be aware that since 2021
- ENWIN has acquired E.L.K
- You no longer have to email the CEO in order to read the most recent ENWIN Annual Report
- A new transmission line was built from Chatham to Lakeshore and there is a transmission line from Windsor to Lakeshore in the works
- In November 2019, the City Council of Windsor, Ontario unanimously agreed to declare a climate change emergency and passed a resolution calling for the phase-out of gas-fired power in Ontario in 2020; In January of 2023, Windsor City Council approved expanding Capital Power’s Co-generation plant by 100 MW.
Part V: Follow the Sun
There are some areas of modern life where there are, what I believe to be, overly simple narratives. For example, stories about crime and policing are frequently told in way that are too simple to be true. And there are other instances where the path forward should be obvious to everyone and yet other people will go out of their way to make them out to be thorny or weirdly complicated. Ask about renewable energy on reddit and there will be someone who will pop up and want to speak to you on behalf of the oil and gas industry.
Mitigating the causes and effects of climate change is a known wicked problem. And yet, if you read the advice of experts, they are able to express some very clear directions on how we should direct our efforts and our policies and that is this: we must move to renewable energy such as solar and wind, and while doing so, we must electrify everything. Reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will require stopping the burning of fossil fuels and releasing more carbon to the air.
Below is a picture of me attending the 2014 People’s Climate March in NYC.
I hope to celebrate Sun Day with you on September 21 2026.
