Some Notes on Electrification and Solar in Ontario, Canada

👋 Hi! I'm Will Lachance, a software developer living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. For those of you who don't know where Hamilton is, it's near Toronto.

In late 2023, my partner and I had a number of projects done on our house to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions while, also, hopefully saving us some money. Specifically we:

• Replaced our end-of-life gas furnace with a cold-weather heat pump
• Added a small amount of insulation in strategic places based on our audit
• Got a 6kW solar system installed on our roof top
• Replaced our (rental) gas hot water heater with an electric model
• Replaced a gas stove with an induction range

Approximately a year after the work completed, I had enough data on the performance and financials to start making this site. In Spring 2025, I finally published it. I had a few goals:

1. Quantify the environmental impacts from adopting this type of technology.
2. Better understand the viability of household electrification in the future. We benefited from various government programs in our case (Greener homes grants and loans) but it looks like those are on their way out. Would this have made sense without them?

In putting this together, I quickly realized there's just too many variables at play to provide definitive answers on these questions. Still, I felt by combining my own data with some credible public figures (e.g. the CO2 emissions associated with natural gas and electrical generation in Ontario) I could at least provide some information and analysis which might be interesting to someone contemplating something similar.

Here's what I found:

• Heat pumps really do work in the winter for a reasonably insulated house, even in -15°C. No backup required!
• A natural gas furnace emits a lot of carbon dioxide.
• Even a relatively small (6kW) solar system can produce a sizable amount of electricity.
• The economics of both solar and heat pumps are borderline without government support - but not terrible.
• Switching to time-of-use billing made a huge difference for ROI for our solar system.

Please note this is not an academic study. Although I have made every effort to provide accurate data and thorough analysis, it has not been formally peer reviewed (although a few friends did give it a once over, thank you!). Any errors are my own. I reserve the right to adjust my numbers, analysis, and conclusions at any time. If I make major changes, I'll note them in the change log.

This site is an interactive dashboard divided into a number of sections. If you want a primer on what electrification looks like before getting into the numbers, start with Electrification and Solar. If heat pumps, solar panels, etc. are familiar to you and you want to dive straight into the numbers, skip straight to the Energy, Financials and Environmental Impact sections.

Finally, see Questions & Feedback if you have any lingering questions or comments.