On this page
- What the Solar Club Alberta rate actually is
- When to switch between the Solar Club Alberta HI and LO rates
- Who should not join
- Does it matter which retailer you pick?
- The perks, sized honestly
- If your panels are not installed yet
- What Solar Club Alberta membership is worth on a real system
- Common questions
If you have solar panels in Alberta, or you are about to, the Solar Club is probably the single largest financial decision left on the table after you have chosen your system.
It is not a solar company, and it is not a rebate or a government programme — for those, read our guide to Alberta solar incentives. Solar Club Alberta is an electricity rate plan, and it changes what your exported power is worth by roughly a factor of three.
Two things worth saying up front, because most guides bury both. First, the rate is identical at every retailer that offers it, so choosing between them is a smaller decision than it looks. Second, the Solar Club does not pay for everybody — if your system covers less than about 70% of what your home uses, you are probably better off without it. Both of those are explained below.
What the Solar Club Alberta rate actually is
Alberta bills rooftop solar under the Micro-Generation Regulation using net billing. The rule that matters is this: you are credited for the power you export at the same rate you pay for the power you import, within a given billing period.
Here are the rates as published by the programme on 3 August 2026:
| Rate | Per kWh | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| HI rate | 35.00 ¢ | The months you export more than you import — typically March to October |
| LO rate | 5.90 ¢ | The months you import more than you export — typically November to February |
| Pre-Solar rate | 5.90 ¢ | After you have signed an installation contract, before the system is live |
| For comparison: Alberta's default rate | 12.06 ¢ | The Rate of Last Resort, if you have never signed a contract |
That single rule is what makes the Solar Club work. If you are on a high rate during the months you are sending power out, you are paid a high rate for it. If you are on a low rate during the months you are drawing power in, you pay a low rate for it. You are allowed to move between the two.
For comparison, Alberta's default electricity rate in Calgary is 12.06 cents per kWh, set by the Alberta Utilities Commission and fixed until the end of 2026.
All figures read from the Solar Club Alberta rate card and the Utilities Consumer Advocate on 3 August 2026.
Worth checking dates on this. The HI rate is not regulated — Solar Club's own FAQ states that it “is set by the Solar Club” rather than by a regulator, and that it moves with market conditions. Several guides currently ranking for this topic still quote 30 cents, which was correct at one point and is not now. If you are reading a Solar Club figure anywhere, including here, check when it was written.
When to switch between the Solar Club Alberta HI and LO rates
You move between the HI and LO rates yourself. The mechanics, from the programme's own documentation:
You can switch once per billing cycle, penalty-free
There is no fee and no contract penalty for moving between the two rates.
You can backdate the switch to your last meter read
This is the part people miss, and it is genuinely valuable — if you realise in mid-May that you should have switched in April, you can often still capture those weeks.
The switch date is independent of your billing cycle
If you nominate 14 March, you are on the old rate to 13 March and the new rate from 14 March, and both appear on the bill.
As for when: the rule is simply whether you are a net exporter or a net importer that month.
- Export more than you import, be on the HI rate.
- Import more than you export, be on the LO rate.
- Jan
- Feb
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun
- Jul
- Aug
- Sep
- Oct
- Nov
- Dec
For a home producing roughly 100% of its own annual consumption, that usually means switching up in March or April and back down in October or November.
You do not have to guess. The programme sends a pre-bill notification three business days before your invoice is finalised, showing your export, import and net kWh for the period, which tells you directly which side of the line you are on. There is now also an opt-in feature that performs the switch automatically when your net position flips, though it requires you to be on the HI or LO rate rather than the variable one.
Two switches a year, each worth real money, on a decision the programme will effectively make for you if you let it. There is not much excuse for getting this one wrong.
Who should not join
This is the section most guides skip, and it is the one that decides whether Solar Club Alberta applies to you at all.
The whole benefit of the HI rate comes from being a net exporter in summer. If your system never produces more than your home consumes in any month, you never build the credit that the rest of the year runs on — and you would just be paying 35 cents for imported power instead of 12.
The threshold that gets published, and it matches the programme's own guidance, is about 70%: a home whose solar covers 70% or more of its annual electricity use will typically export enough in summer to benefit. Below that, the advice is to stay on the low rate or a fixed rate all year round.
Check your installer's original quote. It should state an estimated percentage of your electricity offset by the system. If that number is comfortably above 70%, this is for you. If it is 50%, it is not.
There are also hard eligibility limits. Your system must be a small micro-generation site — under 150 kW, which covers every residential installation and most farms — and your utility must have installed a bidirectional cumulative meter.
Some parts of the province are excluded outright: Medicine Hat, and homes served by several rural electrification associations including Peigan, Ermineskin, Wild Rose, Lakeland, North Parkland Power, and Blue Mountain Power Co-op. Because eligibility follows your wires provider rather than your postal code, the only reliable check is to confirm your own address with the retailer before you enrol.
The programme also asks members to make a donation to a local food bank or charity of their choosing.
Does it matter which retailer you pick?
Less than you would expect, and this is the most common question about the programme.
There are 40 participating retailers — Community Energy Marketers, in the programme's language — and they all offer the identical HI and LO rate. The rate is set by the Solar Club, not by the retailer. The top-ranked discussion thread on this topic asks whether they are “basically all the same”, and on the number that matters, the answer is yes.
What does vary is the monthly administration fee. Three examples, published by the retailer-comparison site goglean.ca and read on 3 August 2026:
| Retailer | Monthly admin fee |
|---|---|
| Shared Value Energy | $7.99 |
| Park Power | $8.85 |
| Get Energy | $9.97 |
That is a spread of about $24 a year. Real, but not worth a week of research — and worth knowing so you can stop looking for a difference that is not there.
Beyond the fee, the differences are things like sign-up credits, whether the retailer bundles natural gas or internet, and which local charities it supports. Several Alberta solar installers run their own retailer brands on that list, which is worth being aware of when an installer recommends one.
We should be clear about our own position here: we are not one of them. Selling electricity in Alberta requires a licence as an energy marketer under the Consumer Protection Act, and we are a solar installer, not a retailer. We hold Solar Club membership ourselves and we help our customers through enrolment, but you sign up with a retailer directly and we do not take a position on which.
If you want a tiebreaker: pick the lowest admin fee among retailers whose customer service you can actually reach.
The perks, sized honestly
The rate is the reason to join. The rest is worth knowing about but should not drive the decision.
Cash back
Members earn 3% cash back annually on electricity imported from the grid, and 3% on natural gas if the gas account is bundled. If you own a battery electric vehicle, that rises to 5% on both — introduced to offset Alberta's EV tax, and it requires you to submit your vehicle registration each year. Cash back applies only on the HI and eligible LO rates, not the variable rate.
Renewable energy certificates
The programme purchases RECs equivalent to 10% of the energy its members import from the grid. You will see this described elsewhere as a much larger share; 10% is what the programme's own FAQ states as of 3 August 2026.
Carbon offsets
Your system's generation can produce carbon offset credits saleable in Alberta's compliance market through an aggregator, provided you started generating after 2 January 2012. This is a genuine additional revenue stream, though a modest one, and some grants disqualify you from claiming it — check before assuming.
Price match
If Alberta's regulated rate rises above the HI rate in a given month, members receive the higher figure. Given that Alberta's regulated rate exceeded 30 cents at points in 2023, this is not hypothetical.
Credit control
Export credits can be applied against your natural gas account as well as your electricity account, or held on file rather than refunded — useful, because credit built up in July is what pays your January bill.
None of these will change whether solar makes sense for your home. The 35-cent rate might.
If your panels are not installed yet
One feature is genuinely underused, and it applies before you own a single panel.
The Pre-Solar rate is 5.90 cents per kWh, and you can enrol as soon as you have signed an installation contract — you send the retailer a copy of the signed contract, and that is the qualification. Alberta's default rate is about 12 cents, so for a household using 700 kWh a month, that is roughly $43 a month while you wait.
It runs for 180 days from enrolment and rolls automatically onto the Solar Club LO rate once your wires company registers the site as a micro-generator. If the system is not commissioned inside 180 days, you move to the lowest available fixed rate rather than being penalised.
Permits, utility approval and inspection typically take weeks to a few months in Alberta. The Pre-Solar rate means that waiting period is not dead time — which is worth knowing before you book a solar quote, because the clock starts at signature rather than at switch-on.
What Solar Club Alberta membership is worth on a real system
Concretely, on a 7 kW system on a Calgary home sized to its own consumption:
On Alberta's default rate, the annual benefit of the system works out to roughly $1,383. On a Solar Club rate, roughly $2,023. Against a system costing around $19,500, that is the difference between paying it off in about 14 years and paying it off in about 9.6.
Roughly four and a half years, from a rate plan you can switch once a billing cycle, penalty-free, and backdate to your last meter read if you realise late.
We have set out that calculation in full — every input, every source, and the arithmetic — in a separate article on the solar panel payback period in Alberta, because it deserves more room than a section. The installed cost above is the midpoint of a market range that article sources and we do not re-derive here. If you want to check our working rather than take the summary, that is where to go.
The honest summary of this page: Solar Club Alberta is the highest-value decision available to an Alberta solar owner after the system itself, it costs nothing to join and nothing to leave, and it is not right for homes whose systems are too small to export in summer.