How much you get
Battery storage installation
$300 per kWh of storage capacity, capped at 50% of your total project cost.
Battery + solar, stacked
Combine with the solar rebate (also up to $5,000) if you're installing both.
Honest math for Thunder Bay
A Thunder Bay household stacking a heat pump with solar or battery can land in the $4,000–$17,000 range in direct rebates — the same range as anywhere else in Ontario, since this is a provincial program.
How to claim it
- Complete the eligibility form on the Save on Energy portal
- Select a participating contractor
- Get pre-installation approval before work starts
- Installation is completed
- Contractor submits the post-installation application
- Rebate cheque arrives within 60 days of approval
Battery installers in Thunder Bay
We're still building our verified installer network in Thunder Bay. In the meantime, browse our full directory of vetted installers across Ontario — several serve the Northwestern Ontario region.
Browse the installer directory →
Winter is the real backup-power case in Thunder Bay
Thunder Bay Hydro (operating as Synergy North) deals with a different flavour of outage than most of southern Ontario: not derechos and summer thunderstorms, but sustained winter storms where wind gusts near 80 km/h combine with heavy snow loading on lines, sometimes leaving thousands of customers without power at once, and crews working restoration in genuinely dangerous cold. That combination, an outage happening exactly when losing heat matters most, is a stronger backup-power argument than the rebate math alone. A battery here isn't really competing with a generator on cost. It's competing with the risk of a furnace blower and thermostat losing power during a −25°C week.
The City of Thunder Bay's climate action page and Synergy North's outage map are both useful before deciding on system size, and Northwestern Ontario's remoteness from the rest of the provincial grid, where repairs sometimes wait on parts or crews travelling from further south, is a detail homeowners further south don't have to plan around. Local Reddit threads on r/thunderbay tend to circle back to the same practical question: whether a battery is worth it given how often winter outages here are measured in hours rather than the multi-day events that hit further south, and the honest answer is that Thunder Bay's shorter, more frequent outages are actually a better match for a modest battery than for a generator.
Common questions
How much is the battery storage rebate in Thunder Bay?
Up to $5,000: $300 per kWh of storage capacity, capped at 50% of total project cost, and only when installed alongside solar. Paired together, solar and battery reach up to $10,000 combined.
Do I need solar panels to get the battery rebate?
Yes. Ontario's Home Renovation Savings Program treats the battery rebate as an add-on to a solar installation, not a standalone incentive. A battery bought without solar gets no provincial rebate.
Next steps
View all Thunder Bay rebate programs → or check the official Home Renovation Savings Program site → for the current source of truth.