Now departing: a $0 power bill from your roof in Lacombe.
We're an Edmonton-area solar crew, about an hour and a half up the QEII from Lacombe. Think of this page as the departures board for your solar journey — every stop laid out, what it costs, and why a longer drive doesn't change your fare. No travel surcharge: same crew, same per-watt pricing as town.
Six stops to a $0 bill.
Lacombe was built on the line — the historic Calgary & Edmonton railway runs right through the heart of town, between Red Deer and Ponoka. So here's your solar journey laid out like a schedule. Every project runs these same stops, and we drive the whole route for you.
Assessment
We look at your last 12 months of FortisAlberta bills, your roof or your acreage, and your shading. Fifteen minutes, no obligation. If solar doesn't pencil out for your place, this is where we tell you honestly.
Custom Design
We size the array to your actual usage — aiming for that $0 annual bill, not to oversize and oversell. You get a layout, a production estimate and a fixed price before anyone touches your roof.
Permit & Utility
We pull the electrical permit and file your micro-generation application with FortisAlberta. You chase none of it — the paperwork is our job, start to finish.
Installation
Our in-house crew, supervised by a Master Electrician, mounts LONGi 500W panels with APsystems DS3 microinverters. Most homes are done in a day or two, critter guard and lifetime leak-proof roof guarantee included.
Inspection & Connection
An electrical inspection signs off the work, then FortisAlberta swaps your meter for a bi-directional one that counts both directions. Now your surplus power earns credits instead of spinning past.
$0 Target Bill
Summer surplus banks as net-metering credits and carries you through the dark months. Designed right, your annual electricity bill nets out near zero — for two-plus decades of free power after payback.
What solar actually costs out here.
Here's the fare table, posted plainly. Our cash price sits around $2.80 per watt, and the typical Lacombe house wants a 7 to 8 kW array — call it $19,600 to $22,400 before incentives. Drop to a smaller 3–6 kW build and the per-watt rate creeps up, since the fixed legs of the trip — the run up the QEII, the permit, the electrical rough-in — ride on fewer panels; a 5 kW typically books in around $16,000–$20,000. Payback usually pulls in at year 7 or 8, and from that stop onward the array hands you free power for another two decades.
On the equipment list: LONGi 500W panels paired with APsystems DS3 microinverters. Because each panel runs its own inverter, a snowed-over or shaded module above a dormer can't pull the rest of the roof down with it — useful on Lacombe's older two-storeys. Critter guards come standard on every array we mount, our roof penetrations carry a lifetime leak-proof guarantee, and the installers are our own in-house crew working under a Master Electrician — the same people behind 500+ installs across central Alberta and the Edmonton area since 2018.
How you pay your fare.
Three classes of ticket. Paying cash books the lowest fare — roughly 10% under the financed price. Financeit gets you rolling with $0 down and a monthly payment that often sits close to what the utility was already collecting from you. And folding the cost into a mortgage refinance or HELOC usually rides at the lowest interest rate of the three. The financing page walks the whole route.
Your wires, your meter, your local access fee.
The poles, wires and meter serving Lacombe belong to FortisAlberta — not ATCO, not EPCOR distribution. Fortis is the company that signs off your micro-generation connection and trades your old meter for a bi-directional unit. The application and the permit both travel on our paperwork, not yours.
Here's a Lacombe-specific wrinkle worth knowing. Your bill carries a local access fee set as a percentage of distribution charges — the municipal electricity franchise fee. Lacombe's sat low for years (around 6.20%) before the City moved it toward the provincial median, roughly ~12.75%, around 2019. We won't pin the exact current figure — check the City of Lacombe for that. The honest takeaway: a higher local access fee means every kWh you self-generate with solar avoids more of that charge, which quietly improves the case for going solar here.
Connection details
Historic Main Street roofs and county acreages.
Lacombe is a city of roughly 13,000 to 14,000 people in central Alberta, on the historic Calgary & Edmonton rail line between Red Deer and Ponoka. It's known for one of the best-preserved historic downtowns in the province — the 1904 Flatiron Building, one of very few true flatirons in Canada, and the Michener House, birthplace of Roland Michener, a Governor General of Canada. Around the city spreads Lacombe County farmland, with Gull Lake and the Sylvan Lake corridor close by.
Inside city limits, most departures are rooftop systems on bungalows and two-storeys. The bigger story, though, is the ring of Lacombe County acreages around the city: unshaded open ground where a ground-mount array gets aimed straight south — full production regardless of how the farmhouse happens to face — and can be scaled well past what any roof carries. Add a shop or a barn drawing load and the design brief changes entirely.
Battery & EV, briefly.
Two optional connections. A home battery earns its keep on a rural feeder that blinks during storms, holding the furnace, fridge and lights through an outage while banking your daytime solar for the evening. A Level 2 charger hung off the same panel turns sunshine into kilometres if an EV is in the picture. Start with the battery quiz → or browse EV charger packages → — either one rides along in the same site assessment.
What our customers tell us.
A few words from homeowners around our service area, all installed by the crew that would handle your Lacombe job.
They even called us a year after install just to check on the system. That kind of follow-up is almost unheard of.
Up to this point we would highly recommend Stellar Upgrades if you are considering solar panels.
My house looks more advanced, and it really makes a difference in appearance.
Book your departure, Lacombe.
Give us an address in Lacombe or the county and we'll run the route: production, cost and payback for your specific roof or parcel. Fifteen minutes, nothing owed — and a straight no from us if the numbers come up short.
No spam. PJ reads these himself and usually rings back the same day.
✓ We're on it.
Watch for a call from our office within one business day.
Straight answers.
Check us against the source.
Every claim on this board has a source you can pull up yourself — here they are, in order of departure.
Send us your address, Lacombe.
Type in your address and we'll plot the full journey — production, cost and payback for your roof or your quarter — then tell you plainly if the trip isn't worth taking. Free, and over in fifteen minutes.
Stellar Upgrades · Edmonton & the Lacombe area since 2018
One timetable, one price — Edmonton or Lacombe.