Are solar panels worth it in Ontario?

It depends on five things about your particular house, and orientation and shading matter more than anything to do with money. Natural Resources Canada publishes what a Toronto roof produces at each orientation: 1,163 kWh a year per kW installed facing south at latitude tilt, 1,013 laid horizontal, and 802 on a vertical south wall. A north-facing roof is a poor site whatever the electricity price does. A clear, south-facing roof on a house that uses a decent amount of electricity is a good one.

How much difference does the direction my roof faces really make?

Between the best and worst fixed cases NRCan publishes for Toronto, about a third of the output. South at latitude tilt is the benchmark at 1,163 kWh per kW a year. Flat with the panels angled on frames is actually marginally better at 1,174, because Toronto's optimum annual tilt sits a little below its latitude. East or west facing lands near the horizontal figure of 1,013, roughly 87 percent of south. A vertical south-facing surface manages 802. East and west roofs are ordinary sites, not bad ones; north-only roofs are the case to walk away from.

Why will this page not tell me how much shade costs me?

Because we could not find a Canadian source that publishes a shading coefficient for residential roofs, and putting a number on it anyway would be inventing one. Shade is also not linear: a string inverter can lose far more than the shaded fraction of the array, while microinverters or optimisers limit the damage to the panels actually covered. A site survey with a shade tool measures your roof through the year and is the only thing that settles it.

Does it matter how much electricity I already use?

A great deal, and more in Ontario than in most places. Under a net metering agreement the credit for exported power offsets what you consume, and the Ontario Energy Board states that unused credits are reduced to zero after twelve months. So generation your house consumes itself is worth full value, and generation well beyond your own use can expire unused. A high-consumption house therefore gets more out of the same array than a low-consumption one.

Should I replace my roof before installing solar?

If the covering is near the end of its life, yes, and this is the single most expensive sequencing mistake available. A new asphalt shingle roof on a typical Toronto detached home is $8,800 to $16,500 by itself, according to AUK Roofers. Doing it after the array is installed adds the cost of removing and refitting the panels on top, which is a second mobilisation you would be paying for twice. Get the roof inspected before you commit, not after.

Does this checker account for Ontario incentives?

Deliberately not. Ontario's programs carry a long list of conditions that decide whether a household qualifies at all, and they force a genuine either-or choice with net metering that depends on your own consumption pattern rather than on which number looks bigger. That belongs on a page with every condition attached to it, and we keep it on one. This checker is about whether the roof and the household suit solar in the first place, which is the question to answer first.

Are solar panels worth it on your roof?

The honest answer is that it depends on the roof, not on the technology. Five things decide it, and four of them have nothing to do with the price of panels. Answer the questions below and you get a plain verdict with the reasoning attached.

Last updated August 26, 2026By The SolarPanelFinder Rooftop Desk

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If you want the one-line version: a clear, south-facing roof in good condition on a house that owns itself and uses a fair amount of electricity is a good site. A shaded roof or a north-only roof is not, and no incentive fixes either.

Six questions that decide it

Which way does the roof face?Is any of the roof shaded during the day?Electricity you use in a yearFrom your hydro bill.Array size you are consideringHow old is the roof covering?Do you own the home?

Looks worth it

This is the case solar is built for

An 8 kW array on this roof would make about 9,304 kWh a year on NRCan's Toronto figures, against the 9,000 kWh your home uses. That is roughly 103% of your consumption.

Which way the roof facesA south-facing sloped roof is the best fixed case NRCan publishes for Toronto, at 1163 kWh a year for every kW installed.
Shade on the roofNo shading reported. Worth confirming in December rather than June: the low winter sun reaches much further across a roof, and a tree bare of leaves still casts a trunk.
How much of it you would use yourselfThis array would cover about 103% of what your home uses, which is where solar does best in Ontario: the electricity is displaced at the price you would otherwise have paid for it.
The roof underneathA roof with plenty of life left means the array goes on once and stays there for its whole warranty.
Whether the payoff is yoursOwning the home and staying put is the case solar is built for: the system runs for decades and the benefit is entirely yours.

This is a sanity check on the things that decide the answer, not a financial model. It does not include any rebate, because Ontario's programs come with conditions that decide whether you qualify at all and a choice between the rebate and net metering that only you can make. It also cannot see your electrical panel, which is the other common surprise.

The method

Why this checker has no dollar sign in its verdict

The physical questions come first, and they are the ones a web page can actually answer well.

Almost every page answering this query online reaches for money in the first paragraph. We think that is the wrong order. The financial case for solar rests entirely on how much electricity the array makes, and how much it makes is decided by physical facts about your roof that are knowable for free and cheap to check. If the roof faces north, or a mature maple sits south of it, the arithmetic downstream does not matter.

The orientation scale here is not a rule of thumb. Natural Resources Canada models photovoltaic potential across the whole country and publishes, for every municipality, an annual figure at six different array orientations. For Toronto those are 1,163 kWh per kW at latitude tilt, 1,174 at latitude minus fifteen degrees, 1,096 at latitude plus fifteen, 1,013 horizontal and 802 vertical. This page uses the ratios between those as the penalty scale, which means the orientation verdict is arithmetic on a government dataset rather than an opinion.

Shading gets different treatment, and the difference is the point. We looked for a Canadian source publishing a shading loss coefficient for residential roofs and did not find one. Rather than borrow a figure from a US modelling tool and dress it up as applying here, the checker treats shading as a flag that overrides the rest of the result and tells you to get a survey. A tool that says “we do not know, and here is who does” is more use than one that produces a confident percentage from nothing.

Once the roof passes, the money questions become worth asking, and there are separate tools on this site for them. What the array costs, what the electricity it displaces is worth at the current regulated price, and how long that takes to add up are three different calculations with three different sources behind them.

Frequently asked questions

Are solar panels worth it in Ontario?: It depends on five things about your particular house, and orientation and shading matter more than anything to do with money. Natural Resources Canada publishes what a Toronto roof produces at each orientation: 1,163 kWh a year per kW installed facing south at latitude tilt, 1,013 laid horizontal, and 802 on a vertical south wall. A north-facing roof is a poor site whatever the electricity price does. A clear, south-facing roof on a house that uses a decent amount of electricity is a good one.
How much difference does the direction my roof faces really make?: Between the best and worst fixed cases NRCan publishes for Toronto, about a third of the output. South at latitude tilt is the benchmark at 1,163 kWh per kW a year. Flat with the panels angled on frames is actually marginally better at 1,174, because Toronto's optimum annual tilt sits a little below its latitude. East or west facing lands near the horizontal figure of 1,013, roughly 87 percent of south. A vertical south-facing surface manages 802. East and west roofs are ordinary sites, not bad ones; north-only roofs are the case to walk away from.
Why will this page not tell me how much shade costs me?: Because we could not find a Canadian source that publishes a shading coefficient for residential roofs, and putting a number on it anyway would be inventing one. Shade is also not linear: a string inverter can lose far more than the shaded fraction of the array, while microinverters or optimisers limit the damage to the panels actually covered. A site survey with a shade tool measures your roof through the year and is the only thing that settles it.
Does it matter how much electricity I already use?: A great deal, and more in Ontario than in most places. Under a net metering agreement the credit for exported power offsets what you consume, and the Ontario Energy Board states that unused credits are reduced to zero after twelve months. So generation your house consumes itself is worth full value, and generation well beyond your own use can expire unused. A high-consumption house therefore gets more out of the same array than a low-consumption one.
Should I replace my roof before installing solar?: If the covering is near the end of its life, yes, and this is the single most expensive sequencing mistake available. A new asphalt shingle roof on a typical Toronto detached home is $8,800 to $16,500 by itself, according to AUK Roofers. Doing it after the array is installed adds the cost of removing and refitting the panels on top, which is a second mobilisation you would be paying for twice. Get the roof inspected before you commit, not after.
Does this checker account for Ontario incentives?: Deliberately not. Ontario's programs carry a long list of conditions that decide whether a household qualifies at all, and they force a genuine either-or choice with net metering that depends on your own consumption pattern rather than on which number looks bigger. That belongs on a page with every condition attached to it, and we keep it on one. This checker is about whether the roof and the household suit solar in the first place, which is the question to answer first.

Sources

Where these figures come from

Natural Resources Canada, Photovoltaic potential and solar resource maps of Canada - Toronto output at all six array orientations, which is the whole orientation scale
Ontario Energy Board, Net metering - credits offset consumption only and are reduced to zero after twelve months
AUK Roofers, New Roof Cost in Toronto 2026 - the cost of a new asphalt shingle roof on a Toronto detached home
Ontario Energy Board, Defining Ontario's Typical Residential Electricity Customer - the 9,000 kWh a year default in the consumption field

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