Mapping solar across the Rimbey west country.
We're an Edmonton-area crew about an hour and a half up the road, on Highway 20 in the rolling country between Gull Lake and Pigeon Lake. This page surveys what solar actually costs here, how net metering runs through FortisAlberta, and one local detail — Rimbey's 20% franchise fee — that quietly makes the numbers work better than most towns.
A surveyor's read on Rimbey.
Out here the land does most of the work. Rimbey is a town of about 2,500 people in Ponoka County, sitting on Highway 20 in the west-central rolling country between Gull Lake and Pigeon Lake — ranching and farming ground, with Pas-Ka-Poo Historical Park and the Smithson International Truck Museum in town and the David Thompson corridor opening up to the west. It's open country with long sightlines and little to throw a shadow, which is exactly what a solar array wants. Roughly 2,300 hours of sun a year — about the same as Edmonton — and our cold winters actually help, since panels run more efficiently in the cold. It's snow cover, not temperature, that costs you a handful of winter days.
What solar costs on a Rimbey lot.
Read it like a plot plan. First stake: cash pricing surveys in around $2.80 per watt. Second stake: the typical house here measures out at 7 to 8 kW of panels, putting the total near $19,600 to $22,400 before incentives. A smaller 3 to 6 kW layout carries a higher per-watt figure, since the fixed entries on the sheet — permit, drive time, electrical rough-in — get divided over fewer modules. Closing bearing: a 7 to 8 year payback for most owners, followed by twenty-odd years of power the meter never bills you for.
The equipment we stake to your roof: LONGi 500W panels with APsystems DS3 microinverters. With an inverter on every panel, a module sitting under snow or a chimney's shadow only subtracts itself, while the rest of the array keeps reporting full production. Each job ships with a critter guard so birds and squirrels can't homestead under the panels, and our roof penetrations are backed by a lifetime leak-proof roof guarantee. The fieldwork belongs to our own in-house crew under a Master Electrician, with 500+ Edmonton-area installs logged since 2018.
How you pay for it
Cash
Lowest figure on the sheet — about a 10% discount against the financed price. Owned outright, payback clock running from day one.
$0-down monthly
$0-down through Financeit, with monthly payments that frequently plot close to what the utility had been collecting anyway.
Mortgage / HELOC
Folded into a refinance or home equity line, typically the lowest interest rate of the three options. Details on our financing page.
Your utility, and the one local detail that helps.
Inside the Town of Rimbey, the poles, wires and meter belong to FortisAlberta — that's who swaps your meter for a bi-directional one and approves the micro-generation connection. We handle that whole application and pull the permit for you; you don't chase any of it. (Note: out on the surrounding rural lines, the area co-op is Battle River Power Coop — if you're on an acreage past the town limits, confirm your own provider, but in-town Rimbey homes are FortisAlberta.)
Rimbey's 20% franchise fee actually strengthens the solar case.
The Town of Rimbey's municipal electricity franchise fee is 20%, in effect since January 1, 2022 — AUC-approved on FortisAlberta's municipal franchise fee rider, and among the higher ones in the province. It rides on your bill as part of the local access fee.
Here's the useful part: that 20% rides on the electricity you buy from the grid. Every kWh you self-generate with solar is a kWh you don't buy — so it avoids that much more of the local access charge too. A high franchise fee makes each solar kWh worth a little more here than in a low-fee town, which tightens the payback. Confirm the figure with FortisAlberta or the Town of Rimbey.
Town roofs and county ground-mounts.
Within town limits the work is mostly rooftop systems, plotted panel by panel over Rimbey's bungalows and two-storeys. Step past the survey stakes, though, and the Ponoka County farms and acreages become the bigger opportunity. Unshaded ground with nothing on the horizon makes a textbook ground-mount site: the racking gets oriented due south whatever bearing the farmhouse was built on, and the array can scale far beyond a rooftop's footprint. Add a powered shop, a barn or a quarter of pasture to the legal description and the design grows with it.
Rooftop solar
For Rimbey town lots, a roof-mounted LONGi array sized to your bill. Microinverters keep production steady around chimneys, dormers and the odd shaded corner — with the critter guard and lifetime leak-proof guarantee standard.
Ground-mount
On Ponoka County acreages we set a south-facing ground array on open land — bigger than a roof allows, ideal for a shop or farm load. We engineer it to the quarter-section, not the rooftop.
Battery & EV, briefly.
Two further data points. On a rural feeder that drops out when storms cross the county, a home battery holds the furnace, fridge and lights steady and banks the day's production for after dark. And where an EV is parked in the yard, or soon will be, a Level 2 charger on the same panel turns array output into driving range. Start with the battery quiz → or the EV charger packages →; both get measured during the same site visit.
Readings from the field.
Logged from homeowners around our service area — the same hands that would work your Rimbey roof.
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.
I highly recommend Stellar Upgrades to anyone considering going solar. Their commitment to quality, customer service, and transparency truly sets them apart.
Drop a pin on Rimbey.
Mark your location and we'll bring back surveyed figures for the roof or the acreage. Fifteen minutes of your time, zero obligation — and a plain no if solar can't carry its cost at your place.
No spam. PJ sees every Rimbey request himself and replies within 24 hours.
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Straight answers.
Check us against the source.
Every figure on this survey traces back to a primary record. Pull the originals yourself before you trust ours.
Send us your address, Rimbey.
Give us a street address or a legal land description and we'll run the survey — output, cost and payback for your exact site, with a straight answer if solar doesn't clear the bar. Free, fifteen minutes, no pressure.
One crew, one rate card — town or county.