Canada adds only 57 MW of utility-scale solar in 2025
Canada adds only 57 MW of utility-scale solar in 2025
From:PV Magazine
The Canadian Renewable Energy Association is forecasting Canada’s cumulative solar capacity, which stands at 5.4 GW today, could surge to around 21 GW by 2035, driven by a healthy procurement pipeline across most provinces. Official deployment figures for behind the meter solar installations last year, which are driving Canada’s solar market today, are yet to be finalized.
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Canada deployed 57 MW of utility-scale solar in 2025, according to data from the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA). The association’s annual data release identified new utility-scale projects in Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon last year.
Official data for behind-the-meter solar installations, which were expected to be Canada’s leading market segment last year, are yet to be released as utilities are still collecting data on 2025's new connections.
Phil McKay, CanREA Senior Director of Member Programs, told pv magazine that based on conversations with members, especially in the commercial and industrial space, that it's “been a great year” for behind the meter installations.
“The Alberta system operator was the first to publish some numbers and they are claiming about 100 MW of behind the meter installations. In Ontario, we are expecting to see something similar,” McKay said. “We don’t yet know what the total figure will materialize as but we know that interest has been there throughout the year for most provinces in the country.”
While interest in behind the meter is healthy, McKay said Canada’s interconnection processes need to catch up with those in other countries. “It’s still kind of slow here and can be expensive,” he explained. “Since Canada doesn't produce a lot of the equipment ourselves, getting the soft costs down, including those connection processes and shortening the timelines, is our biggest opportunity to get more installations built behind the meter.”
McKay added that there are around 750 MW of utility-scale solar projects in Canada that have already broken ground and are scheduled for operation before the end of the decade. These projects would take Canada’s cumulative capacity, which stands currently at around 5.4 GW, past the 6 GW threshold before the addition of future behind the meter projects.
CanREA’s latest data release forecasts cumulative solar capacity to surge to 21 GW by 2035, largely driven by forthcoming utility-scale procurements. McKay said procurement plans began to accelerate in the last year, with CanREA's procurement calendar listing open and forthcoming calls in nine of Canada's provinces, led by Ontario.
In Quebec, provincial utility Hydro-Quebec launched a 300 MW solar tender last May, open until the end of March, as the utility works towards adding 3 GW of solar by 2035. Hydro-Quebec is also planning 300 MW of distributed solar over the next ten years, including 125,000 new installations on site by electricity customers.
CanREA’s latest analysis also found that almost every major solar, wind or energy storage procurement process in 2025 had specific criteria or incentives regarding Indigenous participation or ownership. Examples from last year include Canada’s largest off-grid solar project to date and a 32 MW Indigenous-owned solar site in Saskatchewan.
McKay also noted that the coupling of solar with batteries has begun to accelerate in Canada. “They're going hand in hand more than we thought. As I speak to some of the major distributors in the country, they're saying they sold a lot more batteries than they thought they would have,” McKay said. “We're seeing in a lot of markets that the rate is even faster than people were expecting.”
With Canada’s utility-scale storage market nearing 1 GW by the end of 2025, the country has around 25 GW of operational solar, wind and storage, with renewable energy meeting 9.7% of Canada’s total electricity demand last year. CanREA is forecasting 59 GW of solar, wind and storage combined to be added by 2035, which would take the contribution of renewables in Canada’s electricity supply to as high as 29%.
“The strong slate of projects now under construction, combined with advancing procurements, made 2025 the year a regional energy story became a national, Canadian story,” the association’s latest report says.