Highway 16 to Vanderhoof, then Highway 27 north to the lake. We install solar, battery storage and back-up power in Fort St. James and the communities around Stuart Lake. We are a licensed electrical contractor and we do our own electrical work.
A long line into town means weather takes the power out sooner and brings it back later. Solar paired with a battery keeps the essentials running without anyone hauling fuel in the dark.
Plenty of places out along Stuart Lake were never going to be cheap to connect. Building your own supply is often less than what it would cost to run a line.
Band offices, health centres and community halls qualify for far larger rebates than a house does, and we handle that paperwork as part of the work.
Fort St. James sits among more First Nations communities than anywhere else we work. For eligible on-reserve community buildings owned by an Indigenous Governing Body, BC Hydro funds up to $50,000 toward solar and up to a further $50,000 toward battery storage — $100,000 in total. Covering half the installed cost including labour, on continuous intake.
We do the electrical and solar side, and we hire locally on every project. If something needs a feasibility study or grant support before anyone commits capital, that conversation is better had at the start.
Stuart Lake shapes most of what we are asked to do around Fort St. James. A large share of the properties are waterfront or near-waterfront, a good number are seasonal, and the building stock runs older than it does in Prince George. Which means the service panel is usually the first thing we look at, not the roof.
Fort St. James is not separately listed in the building code climatic table, so the ground snow load for your address comes from the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, and we obtain it before designing anything.
Seasonal properties have an awkward load shape. A cabin used heavily in summer and lightly in winter is well matched to solar. One used in winter and shut up in summer is close to the worst case, because it consumes when the array produces least. Neither is a reason not to build. But it changes the size that makes sense, and we would rather say so before you spend money than after.
This is also a long way down a long line. Outages here are not reliably the ten-minute kind, and a grid-tied array on its own will not run your house through one. It is required to shut down with the grid to protect line crews. A battery is what changes that, and how it works is here.
BC Hydro closed net metering to new customers on 1 July 2026. Under the Self-Generation rate that replaced it, the power you export is bought at 10 cents per kWh and credited on every bill rather than settled once a year.
Rebates are still on the table. Up to $5,000 on solar and up to $5,000 on a battery enrolled in BC Hydro’s Peak Saver program, or up to $1,500 without it. But since 1 June 2026 BC Hydro only pays them when the work is done by a Home Performance Contractor Network member. We are one. If your installer is not, the rebate simply does not get paid.
Want a number before you call? The solar savings calculator uses our own pricing and your actual BC Hydro consumption to size a system and estimate the payback for a home in Fort St. James.
About 160 km from our shop, up Highway 27 from Vanderhoof. It is a drive we make regularly, and the cost of it sits inside the quoted price.
Tell us what the property is and what you need it to do. We will work out whether solar is the right answer for it.
Nechako Solar is a licensed BC electrical contractor, licence LEL0204111, and a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network (HPCN). You can check that in the HPCN directory. Rebate amounts and rate details are current as of August 2026 and are set by BC Hydro, not by us.
