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Here is the short version, because most pages on this topic take a thousand words to get to it.
Alberta does not have net metering. What it has is net billing, under the Micro-Generation Regulation. The practical difference: when you export a kilowatt-hour to the grid you are credited for the energy portion of its value only — not for the delivery, transmission and rider charges you pay on the kilowatt-hour you import later.
That is why a system sized to produce everything your home uses does not produce a zero bill. It is not a flaw in your system, and it is not your installer having oversold you. It is how the province bills micro-generation, and it is worth understanding before you sign anything, because it changes what the system is worth.
How net metering in Alberta actually works
Mechanically, four things have to be true before you are credited for anything.
- Your system is registered as a micro-generator.Under Alberta’s Micro-Generation Regulation, a generating site that is connected to the grid and sized to serve its own load is a micro-generator. The approval comes from the wires company that owns the poles and the meter — ENMAX in Calgary, EPCOR in Edmonton, FortisAlberta across much of the province, City of Red Deer Electric Light & Power in Red Deer — and not from your electricity retailer, which is the single most common misunderstanding about micro-generation in Alberta.
- Your meter measures both directions.The distributor fits a bidirectional meter that records import and export separately. Without it, exported power is given away rather than credited.
- Your retailer applies the credit.The credit appears on your retailer’s bill, priced at the energy rate on your contract. This is the part that makes the arrangement feel like net metering: over a billing period, export offsets import.
- Your system is sized to your own consumption.The Regulation ties system size to the site’s own annual electricity use, which is why an installer asks for twelve months of bills before quoting.
So the mechanism people describe as net metering in Alberta is real, and it works roughly as they expect inside a single billing period. What differs — and what the next section is about — is exactly which part of the bill the credit touches.
Net metering vs. net billing: the difference that shows up on your bill
Under true net metering, an exported kilowatt-hour cancels an imported one — the whole thing, including what you pay to have it delivered. Ontario runs a scheme like that, which is one reason so much of the guidance a Canadian search returns does not apply here. One of the results currently ranking on page one for this Alberta question is, in fact, an Ontario programme page.
Under net billing in Alberta, an exported kilowatt-hour is credited at the energy rate only.
Your power bill has more on it than energy. There is the energy charge itself, and then there are delivery and transmission charges, rate riders, and fixed daily administration charges that are there whether you generate anything or not. Export credits reach the first of those. They do not reach the rest.
The consequence is the thing people find out after installation rather than before: a system that produces as much electricity over a year as the household consumes will still receive a bill. Not a large one, but not zero, and the difference is not an error.
It also means the total value of your exports depends heavily on the rate attached to your account, because the credit is priced at that rate. This is a real decision with real money attached, and it is one we are not permitted to make for you: selling an electricity rate in Alberta requires a licence as a marketer of energy under the Consumer Protection Act, and we are a solar installer rather than a retailer. We do not recommend a retailer and take no position on which you should use.
The Government of Alberta’s own consumer advocate describes the arrangement as net billing. That is the accurate term, and the reason this page is titled the way people search for it is simply that almost nobody searches for the accurate one.
What you are credited, line by line
Numbers make this concrete. Take a month where a solar home imports 400 kWh from the grid overnight and in poor weather, and exports 300 kWh on good days.
On Alberta’s Rate of Last Resort — the default rate for anyone who has never signed a contract, set at 12.06 cents per kWh in ENMAX Power Corporation’s Calgary distribution area, AUC-approved and fixed until 31 December 2026 — the arithmetic runs like this.
Imported energy: 400 kWh at 12.06 cents is about $48.
Delivery, transmission and riders on that imported power: roughly another 5 cents a kWh, so about $20 on the same 400 kWh. Plus fixed daily charges, which do not move.
Exported energy credit: 300 kWh at 12.06 cents is about $36. Energy only. Nothing comes off the delivery side.
Net position: roughly $32 of energy and delivery charges, before fixed charges — against about $12 if those same 300 kWh had cancelled 300 kWh of import outright, delivery included, as they would under true net metering.
Two things follow. First, selling solar power back to the grid in Alberta is worth less per kilowatt-hour than buying it, which is not obvious from the headline rate. Second, the arithmetic changes sharply if your export credit is priced differently from your import: an electricity rate paying 35.00 cents per kWh for exported power against a low rate for imported power — the structure the Alberta Solar Club uses, its rates read from the programme on 3 August 2026 and explicitly unregulated — inverts the whole picture. How that programme works, and who it does not suit, is set out in our guide to the Alberta Solar Club.
Every figure above is a published rate read on a stated date. The Rate of Last Resort is fixed only to the end of 2026 and the Solar Club rate is not regulated at all, so check both against their sources before relying on them.
The Micro-Generation Regulation, and the “20% rule” that is not Alberta’s
Sizing is where the rules for micro-generation in Alberta are most often misquoted.
What the Micro-Generation Regulation actually requires is that a micro-generation system be sized to meet the site’s own annual electricity consumption. Not the roof area, not a round number of panels, and not your neighbour’s system. That is why a quote should follow twelve months of kilowatt-hour readings rather than a site visit alone, and why two identical roofs can legitimately carry different systems.
The commonly asked “20% rule” is not a term that appears in Alberta’s micro-generation rules at all. It is borrowed from electrical-code discussions elsewhere about how much generation an electrical panel can accept, which is a question about your panel rather than about your entitlement to export. If someone tells you Alberta has a 20% rule governing what you may generate, ask them to point at it.
There is a real size ceiling: micro-generation covers sites under 150 kW, which is every home and most small businesses and farms. Above that you are into a different regulatory category entirely.
The practical reading is simpler than the rule. You may build a system to cover your own use. You may not build a power station on a residential roof and sell into the grid, and net billing is the mechanism that makes sure of it.
What net metering in Alberta means for your payback
Everything above matters for exactly one reason: it determines what your system earns.
Because credits are energy-only, a payback calculation built on gross production overstates the return. The honest version runs on net monthly flows — what you actually import, what you actually export, and what each is priced at. When that is done properly for a typical Calgary home, the payback period lands at roughly 9 to 11 years on a Solar Club electricity rate and roughly 12 to 16 years without one. We have shown that calculation in full, every input named, dated and sourced, in our article on the solar panel payback period in Alberta, and we do not re-derive it here.
The other half of the picture is what you did not have to pay in the first place. Rebates, financing programmes and tax credits change the number at the front end rather than the back, and they move far more often than the billing rules do — those are set out in our guide to Alberta solar incentives.
The summary: net metering in Alberta is really net billing, the credit reaches your energy charge and not your delivery charge, and the rate attached to your account matters more than almost any equipment decision you will make.