This guide covers battery backup for a grid-connected home — outage resilience and how it interacts with BC Hydro. If your property has no grid connection at all, see batteries and generators for an off-grid BC property instead.
Atmospheric rivers and windstorms take out power across the North Shore, the Fraser Valley, and Sea‑to‑Sky every year. Here’s how a solar battery keeps your home running — and how it stacks up against a gas generator.
First, a surprise: solar alone won’t power your home in an outage
Grid‑tied solar is required to shut down during a grid outage — an anti‑islanding safety rule that protects line workers. So without storage, a blackout leaves even a solar home dark. The battery is what changes that: it isolates your home and keeps feeding it from stored energy.
How battery backup works
When the grid drops, a hybrid inverter disconnects your home and powers your chosen circuits from the battery — automatically, usually within a fraction of a second. Your solar keeps recharging the battery by day, so on a multi‑day outage you can ride through far longer than a single charge. You decide what’s protected: typically fridge/freezer, heat pump or furnace fan, internet, lights, and outlets for phones and medical devices.
Battery vs. generator
What a battery gives you:
- Automatic — no going outside in a storm
- Silent, no fumes, indoor‑safe
- Recharges from your solar — no fuel
- Earns its keep daily (bill savings + Peak Saver)
- Up to $5,000 BC Hydro rebate (with Peak Saver)
Where a generator still competes:
- Runs indefinitely if you have fuel
- Lower up‑front cost for whole‑home
- Noise, fumes, refuelling, maintenance
- Does nothing on the other 360 days a year
- No rebate; fuel logistics during storms
For most Metro Vancouver homes, a battery wins on convenience and daily value; a generator can still make sense for very long rural outages or whole‑home heavy loads. The two aren’t exclusive — we can design a battery as primary backup with a generator as a deep‑backup layer.
About the author
Majid Arabi is the founder of Raincoast Solar. He works with homeowners, stratas and businesses across Metro Vancouver and southwest British Columbia on solar and battery storage — from the first 3D roof design and the rebate paperwork through to handover, with installation carried out by licensed electrical partners.
General information only. Backup duration depends on battery size, load, and solar recharge. Rebate figures current as of July 2026 and subject to Peak Saver enrollment and eligibility.
Sizing backup around what you actually need
The instinct is to size a battery to run the whole house exactly as normal. That is the most expensive way to approach it, and rarely the best value. Most households are far happier with a well-chosen partial backup that runs a long time than a whole-home backup that runs briefly.
- Essential circuits — fridge and freezer, furnace or heat pump controls, some lighting, internet and device charging, and the well pump if you have one. This is what keeps a house liveable.
- Comfort circuits — more lighting, a heat pump running properly, kitchen outlets.
- The expensive ones — electric range, electric hot water, EV charging. These draw hard and drain a bank quickly.
Deciding which tier you want, before the quote, is the single most useful preparation. It determines both the battery capacity and how the electrical panel is configured.
What actually happens when the power goes out
A correctly configured system disconnects from the grid at the moment of the outage — a safety requirement, so your system cannot energise lines that crews may be working on — and then runs your backed-up circuits from the battery. Solar continues to charge the battery through daylight, which is what separates solar-plus-storage from a battery alone: in a multi-day winter outage, the array keeps topping it up.
The switchover is automatic and fast enough that most appliances simply carry on. You generally notice it because the lights flicker once, not because anything stops.
Winter is the test, and winter is the hard case
BC outages cluster in exactly the season when solar contributes least. An atmospheric river in November brings down lines on the North Shore and in the Fraser Valley on a day when your array might make a fraction of its summer output.
So a backup system designed for coastal BC should not assume the sun will carry it. It should hold enough stored energy to cover a realistic outage on its own, and treat winter solar as a useful supplement that extends the runtime rather than as the primary source. This is the opposite of how backup is often sized in sunnier markets, and it is worth checking that whoever quotes you understands the distinction.
Rebates and the Peak Saver condition
BC Hydro pays $500 per kWh of installed storage, up to $5,000, capped at 50% of installed cost, with a minimum system size of 5 kWh. Pre-approval is required before purchase.
The condition worth knowing: from 1 April 2026, the full rebate requires enrollment in Peak Saver. A battery paired with solar but not enrolled drops to up to $1,500, and battery-only systems without Peak Saver are no longer eligible at all. Peak Saver lets BC Hydro draw on your battery during system peaks — in exchange for the larger rebate — so it is worth understanding what it asks of you before enrolling.
Batteries and PST
One budgeting detail people miss: the BC PST exemption that covers panels, wiring, controllers and inverters does not cover batteries. Bulletin PST 203 treats them as generic goods regardless of what they are connected to, so expect provincial sales tax on the storage portion of your quote.
Sources
- BC Hydro, Rebates for solar panels and battery storage.
- Government of B.C., Bulletin PST 203 — Energy Conservation.
Frequently asked questions
How long will a home battery run my house in an outage?
It depends entirely on which circuits you back up and how much capacity you install, so any single figure is misleading. A bank covering essentials — refrigeration, heating controls, lighting, internet and a well pump — will typically carry a household through a multi-day outage, particularly with solar recharging it each day. The same bank asked to run an electric range, electric hot water and EV charging as well may be flat within hours. The useful question is not how many hours the battery lasts, but which loads you want it to carry.
Can I run my house on solar alone when the power goes out?
No, and this surprises almost everyone. A grid-tied array without storage shuts down during an outage. It is a safety requirement: your system must not energise lines that utility crews may be working on. Without a battery and the switching equipment that isolates your home from the grid, the panels sit idle in bright sunshine while the house is dark. Storage is what converts solar into outage protection.
Is a battery better than a generator?
They solve overlapping but different problems. A generator delivers a great deal of energy for as long as you have fuel, and it does not care what the weather is doing. A battery is silent, starts instantly and automatically, needs no fuel, requires almost no maintenance, and earns its keep the rest of the year by shifting solar into the evening peak. A generator earns nothing on the 360 days there is no outage. For most Metro Vancouver homes the battery is the better fit; for very long outages on remote properties, generators still have a role, which is why off-grid systems use both.
Do I need to back up the whole house?
Rarely, and it is usually poor value. Whole-home backup means sizing storage for your largest possible simultaneous draw, which is expensive and mostly idle capacity. A well-designed essential-circuits backup costs considerably less and keeps the house genuinely liveable. You can always specify a larger system; the point is to make it a deliberate choice rather than a default.
Will a battery pay for itself?
Under the current export rules it contributes real economic value, because it converts surplus that would export cheaply into evening consumption offsetting full retail rates. Whether that alone recovers the cost depends on your consumption pattern, the rebate you qualify for, and how you value not losing a freezer full of food in a February windstorm. We would rather set out those components honestly than quote a payback figure that assumes your household behaves like an average one.
What is Peak Saver and should I enrol?
Peak Saver lets BC Hydro draw on your battery during periods of high system demand, in exchange for the larger rebate. From 1 April 2026 it is effectively the condition for the full $5,000 battery rebate. It is a reasonable trade for many households, but it does mean the battery is not exclusively yours to dispatch. Understand how often and how deeply it can be called on before enrolling.