HELP is the City of Toronto's property-tax-repaid financing program for home energy upgrades, including solar and battery storage. Here's how the loan structure works and where it fits alongside the HRSP rebate and net metering.
HELP is administered by the City of Toronto, not by Terawatt Solar. Loan amounts, rates, and terms are set and updated by the City; confirm current figures before budgeting your project.
The Home Energy Loan Program is a Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, program run by the City of Toronto. Instead of taking out a personal loan or a line of credit to cover a solar installation, a Toronto homeowner can borrow through the City and repay the loan as an additional line item on their property tax bill. The loan is secured against the property itself rather than your personal credit, which is the core difference between HELP and a typical home improvement loan from a bank.
Because the loan rides on the property tax bill, the obligation generally transfers with the home if you sell before it's paid off, rather than needing to be paid out in full at closing the way a personal loan often does. That changes the financial math for a homeowner who isn't certain they'll stay in the home for the full term of the loan, since the next owner effectively takes on the remaining payments along with the improvement itself.
HELP lends up to $125,000 per property, capped at 10% of your home's current value assessment, whichever is lower. Projects that include solar PV, geothermal, new windows, or a heat pump qualify for the program's longest repayment window, a 20-year term, which keeps the added property tax line manageable relative to what the system saves you monthly. Rates are fixed for the life of the loan and set by the City on a published schedule that's updated periodically, so we confirm the current rate with you at the time you apply rather than quoting a number here that may have since changed.
HELP funds a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades, and rooftop solar PV is explicitly listed among eligible improvements, alongside battery-compatible upgrades, insulation, window upgrades, and heat pumps. One detail worth knowing: solar-only and heat-pump-only projects are no longer required to go through the pre- and post-renovation EnerGuide home energy assessment that standard multi-measure HELP projects need, which shortens the application timeline if solar is the only upgrade you're financing. For a homeowner financing a full residential solar install with a battery for backup, HELP can be the financing vehicle that covers whatever isn't paid out of pocket or covered by a rebate.
HELP is financing, not a rebate, so it doesn't compete with either of the two main incentive paths we model for every Toronto proposal. A homeowner can take the HRSP rebate to reduce the upfront cost, then finance the remaining balance through HELP, while still choosing between net metering or load displacement for how the system itself is sized. We walk through all three variables, rebate, financing, and metering path, together, since they interact rather than standing alone.
HELP is run by the City of Toronto specifically, so it applies to properties within city limits, including the areas we serve most often such as Toronto proper and the surrounding wards. Homeowners in Markham, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Oakville, Burlington, Hamilton, or Kitchener should ask us about whatever municipal financing option, if any, their own city currently offers, since program availability and terms differ city by city.
Official source: City of Toronto – Home Energy Loan Program (HELP).
