Energy-hungry companies, municipalities, and First Nations in Nova Scotia increased their solar generating capacity 82% last year, but are still lagging behind residential consumers, a new data report from private power utility Nova Scotia Power shows.
Energy consultant David Brushett said the sharp increase is partly due to legislative changes a few years ago have allowed companies to install solar systems 10 times larger than before. The net metering system gives firms a credit on their power bills for the electricity they generate, offsetting their own usage. Even with the new rules, they are not allowed to generate more power than their operations consume.
The program allows solar projects of up to one megawatt for commercial customers, a scale that Brushett said makes more financial sense. “So that allowed much larger installations,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview.
“And then there’s also very good federal tax incentives now available to commercial customers. So that’s also causing a lot of growth.” A federal investment tax credit, introduced in 2023, covers up to 30% of a renewable energy project’s capital cost.
The solar growth spurt comes as Nova Scotia Power, which dominates the province’s energy infrastructure, moves toward its target to have 80% of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. Renewables generated about 42% of the utility’s power in 2025, and it said solar currently makes up about 1% of its overall energy mix.
The utility has traditionally relied on coal for the bulk of its electricity generation, and has plans to shutter several coal-burning plants in the coming years. It’s aiming to hit its 2030 renewables target mostly with a mix of onshore wind farms and imports from Labrador’s Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, which ships power to Nova Scotia via subsea cables.
Over the longer term, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston is banking on offshore wind. The $60-billion Wind West project is meant to deliver up to 40 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 if all phases are built. A call for companies interested in building the five-gigawatt first phase is expected later this year. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the federal government is prepared to help Nova Scotia with the development.
Roby Douglas, president of Dartmouth, NS-based installer Natural Forces Solar, told CP he wants to see solar become a bigger part of the province’s power generation in the coming years, up to around 5% of the total. He said projects like Wind West are great, but noted that the turbines aren’t expected to come online until the 2030s.
In the meantime, solar is quick to install and the technology keeps getting better—and cheaper—all the time. He said solar is also great for work force development, with employees who gain expertise on solar projects able to shift into offshore wind later on.
“There’s a pretty significant economies of scale,” Douglas said in an interview.
“The bigger you make a project, the cheaper it gets because there’s a lot of fixed costs. So as the companies have gotten more sophisticated and been able to tackle bigger and bigger projects, the cost to generate power from solar keeps getting better and better.”
Douglas said solar and wind projects tend to complement each other, as winds are typically stronger overnight and in the winter, while solar is obviously more productive during the day and in the summer.
Natural Forces has built commercial-scale rooftop solar projects for organizations like the Sobeys grocery chain, Halifax Water, and Cherubini Metal Works.
The province saw 99 new commercial solar installations completed during 2025, a 41% increase from the end of 2024, according to Nova Scotia Power data.
There are now at least 342 commercial solar installations in the province, and the utility said that total excludes behind-the-meter operations that aren’t connected to the grid.
But the report still shows more residential customers installing more solar energy systems, for total capacity of about 110 MW, about six times the commercial total. Brushett said that’s because residential incentives date back longer, so that part of the market is more mature. Residential power rates are also higher than what commercial customers pay, meaning greater potential for savings.
Nova Scotia Power said it now has 13,000 total customers participating in solar generation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2026.
