Heritage Register · Solar
Updated June 2026
The case for solar in
Lamont, on the record.
Lamont keeps what matters on the record — the most remarkable concentration of historic churches on the continent, the gateway to Elk Island. We documented the case for solar here the same careful way: every number checked, every claim plain. About 45 minutes east of our Edmonton shop, and no travel surcharge — same crew, same pricing.
The register — the case for solar, entered plainly.
Four entries. No salesmanship, no rounding in our favour. This is what we tell people in Lamont when they ask whether solar is worth it, written down so you can check it.
Central Alberta gets more sun than people expect.
Lamont sees roughly 2,300 hours of sunshine a year — on par with much of the Prairies and ahead of plenty of places that already run solar happily. The local winter is an asset, not a problem: panels are semiconductors, and they produce more efficiently in cold, clear air. Snow slides off a pitched array, and the long June days do most of the year's heavy lifting.
Honest note: production is seasonal. You bank summer surplus and draw it back in winter — see Reg. 03.
What a system actually costs, before incentives.
Our cash price is about $2.80 per watt on a straightforward install. A typical Lamont home lands at 7–8 kW — roughly $19,600 to $22,400 before any incentives. Smaller systems (3–6 kW) cost a little more per watt, because the fixed costs of a crew, permits and a meter swap spread over fewer panels.
Every install includes critter guard around the array and our lifetime leak-proof roof guarantee. The hardware is the same in town and out on a county acreage.
Net metering, the path to a roughly $0 bill.
Under Alberta's Micro-Generation Regulation, the surplus your panels send to the grid on long summer days earns retail-rate credits. Those credits carry forward and cover the power you pull back on dark winter evenings. Size the system to your year's usage and the goal is a roughly $0 annual electricity bill.
Most homeowners reach payback in 7 to 8 years. After that, the panels keep producing for two decades or more — that stretch is the return. How net metering works in Alberta →
The equipment we put on your roof.
We install LONGi 500W panels with APsystems DS3 microinverters — a panel-level setup, so shade or a fault on one module doesn't drag the rest down, and you can read each panel individually. It's the same package we install everywhere; Lamont isn't a test bed.
Work is done by our own in-house crew, supervised by a Master Electrician, and we pull the permits ourselves. Will solar carry you through an Alberta winter? →
How you pay for it.
Three routes, recorded straight. The right one depends on whether you'd rather own it outright or keep the cash in your pocket.
Pay outright, take the discount.
Paying cash earns roughly a 10% discount versus financing and gives the fastest payback. This is the $2.80/W figure in Reg. 02.
Finance it through Financeit.
Spread the cost with $0 down at a modest markup, so the monthly payment can sit close to what you were paying the utility. We size it to your bill. Financing details →
Roll it into a mortgage or HELOC.
Folding the system into a home loan keeps the rate low and qualifies for the cash price. Common on larger acreage systems.
Clean-energy property-tax financing.
Some Alberta municipalities offer PACE-style financing repaid on your property-tax bill. We can't confirm the Town of Lamont runs one — check the official CEIP locations list →
The grid & the rules.
Who owns the wires, who you buy power from, and who files the paperwork. In Lamont those are three different answers.
Your utility is ATCO Electric.
The poles, wires and meter serving Lamont belong to ATCO Electric — the distribution utility for north and east-central Alberta. Not FortisAlberta. Not EPCOR. The town sits on ATCO's side of the line, east of the Fort Saskatchewan boundary.
Your micro-generation application and the bi-directional meter swap go through ATCO Electric. Stellar files it and pulls the permit — you don't chase any of it.
Who you buy electricity from is your choice.
Alberta is deregulated. If you've never picked a retailer, you're on the Rate of Last Resort, which replaced the old RRO on January 1, 2025. You can switch retailers any time without affecting your solar.
Net metering runs the same whichever retailer you use — exported surplus earns retail-rate credits under the provincial Micro-Generation Regulation.
Lamont & the surrounding county.
The Town of Lamont is a community of about 1,770 people and the seat of Lamont County, roughly 55 km east of Edmonton on Highway 15. It carries an unusual title earned honestly: the Church Capital of North America, for the density of historic churches left by Ukrainian and Eastern-European settlers who built here a century ago. A town that protects and records its heritage that carefully is, in our experience, exactly the kind of place that thinks in decades — which is how solar pays.
On its doorstep is Elk Island National Park — bison range and a designated Dark-Sky Preserve. That gateway setting is part of the local identity, and it's a fair reminder that the same clear central-Alberta skies that draw stargazers also feed a solar array.
We install on the town's older core and newer streets alike, and out across Lamont County acreages and farms, where open ground often makes a ground-mount the better answer — true south orientation regardless of how the house faces, and room to size the system up. Same crew, same pricing as Edmonton, in town or down a county road.
- Population (2021)
- ~1,770
- Region
- Lamont County
- From Edmonton
- ~55 km / 45 min
- Route
- Highway 15 / 831
- Distribution
- ATCO Electric
- Known for
- Church Capital; Elk Island
- Travel surcharge
- None
Lamont at a glance
Battery & EV, in brief.
Solar is the foundation. Two add-ons that fit the same install, recorded here so they're on the file.
Battery backup.
A home battery stores your daytime solar so it carries you through a rural outage and shifts power into the evening. It switches over fast enough that you may not notice the grid drop — worth weighing if your road sees weather outages.
EV chargers.
A Level 2 charger fills an electric vehicle overnight, and paired with solar much of that driving comes off your own roof rather than the meter. We wire it on the same visit as the array when it makes sense.
On the record — what customers say.
Verified Google reviews, company-wide. We don't dress them up.
Up to this point we would highly recommend Stellar Upgrades if you are considering solar panels. Their whole team have been amazing and professional.
I highly recommend Stellar Upgrades to anyone considering going solar.
I had solar panels installed on my home last month by Stellar Upgrades and I'm honestly impressed with how everything turned out.
Open a file on your Lamont home
Free 15-minute assessment. No obligation. If solar isn't a fit for your place, we'll say so plainly.
No spam. Your note goes to PJ, who replies personally within 24 hours.
✓ We're on it.
One of the Stellar team will reach out within 24 hours.
Questions, answered for the file.
Official Lamont solar resources.
Primary sources, so you can verify everything above rather than take our word for it.
Add your home
to the record.
A free 15-minute assessment: we check your panel, your roof or your ground, and the ATCO Electric meter situation, then give you the real numbers. If solar doesn't make sense for your place, we'll tell you plainly — same crew and pricing as Edmonton, no travel surcharge.