Can a Condo or Townhouse Have a Backup Generator?

A condo or townhouse can have a backup generator only where the owner has outdoor ground for a concrete pad, a gas line that can reach it, and permission to alter both. A standby generator is a gas appliance fixed outdoors, so a unit without that ground is choosing between a home battery and a rented portable unit.

A high-rise apartment unit has no such ground at all. This index cannot say what a given building allows. It holds no bylaw, declaration or ownership data, so nothing on this page states a rule for any condominium corporation or townhouse association. What it can do is price each option from named sources, count the companies that list each kind of work, and show where they are based. Home Generator Index is a directory: it installs nothing, and a company's place in it is not for sale, as the methodology page sets out. The page for contractors describes a separate paid route for passing on work that the site is building. For a detached house the question is mostly size and budget, which the guide to whether a whole-home generator is worth it in Toronto works through.

The three options ask different things of the property. A standby generator installation needs a pad, a gas line and a connection into the electrical panel. A home battery needs room for the unit and its own connection to the panel. A rented portable generator needs an outdoor spot to run in and a safe way to connect whatever it powers.

A battery needs no gas line and no outdoor slab, which is why it comes up first for attached homes. SolarWeb Canada prices a Tesla Powerwall 3, which it lists at 13.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of usable stored energy, at $16,500 to $20,700 fully installed, and a FranklinWH aPower S at $18,000 to $23,000 installed. For the modular Enphase IQ Battery 5P, SolarWeb Canada puts a starting 5 kWh setup at $8,000 to $12,000.

Solar Elios, pricing Canada-wide rather than by brand, puts a single 10 to 13.5 kWh battery at $12,000 to $20,000 installed and two batteries at 20 to 27 kWh at $22,000 to $35,000. It says installation typically adds $2,500 to $6,000 on top of the hardware. Most homes, it says, need 10 to 15 kWh to cover essential loads like refrigeration and lighting, while whole-home backup usually requires 20 kWh or more. Capacity is what moves the total, which suits a unit that only needs a few circuits kept on.

Where those essential circuits are moved onto their own sub-panel, a small second breaker panel, that is a separate piece of electrical work. ElectricSafe, writing about Ontario sub-panel jobs, says most installs land between $800 and $2,000 or more, depending on amperage, the distance from the main panel and whether permits or panel upgrades are needed.

On rebates, the Home Renovation Savings Program's solar page lists battery energy storage at up to $5,000 back. That is $300 per kWh, capped at 50 percent of total costs. The Save on Energy program page lists solar panels and battery storage together at up to $10,000. The solar page describes rebates for rooftop solar panels on their own or combined with a battery, so an owner without a roof of their own should ask the program in writing whether a battery alone qualifies. The home battery backup cost page and the home battery vs standby generator comparison set these figures side by side.

The downtown neighbourhoods hold few listings of any kind. Take 10 of the site's areas in and around the downtown core: CityPlace, the Financial District, the Entertainment District, the Distillery District, St. Lawrence, King West, Church-Wellesley, Downtown Toronto, Liberty Village and Harbourfront. Together they hold 13 records, and none of them carries the standby generator installation category. Corktown, beside the Distillery District, has 1 record, and it does carry that category along with electricians and electrical panel upgrades.

None of these downtown areas holds the 4 companies the site needs before it builds an area page, so none of them has one.

Set that against Richmond Hill at 42 records, Vaughan at 35, Markham at 33 and Mississauga at 32, and the index is plainly concentrated in the 905 suburbs (named for their phone area code) rather than central Toronto. A recorded area is where a business is based, and the index records no service radius, so a thin downtown count does not mean nobody takes downtown work. It does mean a downtown owner should start from the category pages, and the areas page shows how many companies each area holds.

Nothing in these 480 records addresses what a condominium corporation, a landlord or a townhouse association will permit. Those answers can settle the project before any price matters, so they are worth getting in writing before asking for a quote.

These questions are worth putting to the board or property manager.

• Who owns the exterior wall and the ground a gas line or pad would use?
• Does the corporation let a unit owner add a gas appliance, a pad or a battery, and what does it want to see first?
• Who controls the gas meter and the electrical service that feed the unit?
• Is there a building generator, and which circuits does it already cover?
• Does the work change anything about insurance, or about the status certificate, the disclosure document a condominium corporation issues when a unit is sold?

With those answers in hand, the companies can be asked the same way. Of the 480 records, 472 list a phone number and 440 a website, and only 4 list neither, so almost every company can be asked directly whether it works in condominium buildings. The electrical panel upgrades category and the guide to sizing a standby generator for a GTA home cover the steps that follow.