The Mayor of Rockford, Illinois, joined community solar provider Nexamp and ComEd to launch Give-A-Ray, a new 15-year program to provide solar energy benefits and savings to low-and-moderate-income customers in Rockford and the surrounding area for free. With the help of local support services, including the Rockford Housing Authority, outreach to potential participants is underway and requirements are available at ComEd.com/GiveARay.
“Rockford places a high priority on using more renewable energy to generate electricity and on making sure the many benefits are available to customers regardless of income level,” said Mayor Tom McNamara. “We thank Nexamp and ComEd for bringing this innovative offering to Rockford and we look forward to working with them to increase access to solar among residents who are most in need.”
Community solar allows all customers to participate in the benefits of clean solar energy without installing panels on their own homes. Participants subscribe to a solar energy project and earn credits on their monthly utility bills for their portion of the energy the solar project produces.
The first program of its kind in Illinois, Give-A-Ray will enable about 650 ComEd customers per year to enroll and receive community solar credits at no cost. ComEd will pay for the community solar credits on behalf of customers and manage the identification and enrollment of subscribers to the project.
Eligible customers can earn credits on 75% of their average annual energy usage, resulting in a savings of about $250 annually. Credits will vary monthly based on the amount of energy produced by the community solar project and the seasonal impact on energy generation. Give-A-Ray is enabled by the Illinois Solar for All Program, which was established by the Future Energy Jobs Act enacted by the Illinois General Assembly in 2016.
“We worked closely with ComEd to develop a strong partnership and design a joint program that delivers significant savings to qualified community solar subscribers,” said Allan Telio, senior VP of community solar at Nexamp. “We credit ComEd for their vision, leadership and enthusiasm in jointly developing this program with us to ensure it will deliver maximum benefits to customers. I hope other utilities will follow their lead.”
Nexamp’s Rockford community solar farm will add more solar energy to the local grid when it begins operation in the fall of 2021 and will bring immediate benefits to hundreds of residents in surrounding communities. Located just north of downtown Rockford, the project is sited on a former city landfill, giving new life to an otherwise unusable plot of land. The project features more than 6,600 solar panels with 2.6 megawatts of solar generation capacity.
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Childofthe60s says
Solarman: Not everyone has property suitable for on-site solar power generation. Most of the beneficiaries of this program do not. Public utilities are regulated to serve the public interest, and you are right that this regulation is inadequate at times. Blame your elected officials. Nexamp is doing a good thing here, providing extended relief to those in need.
Solarman says
IF you re-read my comment, I’m talking about efficiency of where solar PV should be installed “first”. Blame my ‘elected officials’. There’s at least two courses of (action), one is to depend on an ‘elected official’, the other is to open those big boy and big girl wallets to install solar PV and energy storage on one’s home to save a few thousand dollars per year to put back into the household budget to pay for something else, like homeowner’s insurance for the year or use on property taxes or auto insurance or even groceries. Get a BEV and charge at home each day, one can add the savings of a monthly gasoline bill to add back into the household budget.
I’m just sayin’, when the utility owns and operates the facility, they can throw away non-fueled generation using “curtailment” and run one of their fueled generation resources in what some call “hot standby mode”, where fuel is burned to keep a heat exchange boiler near temperature and ready to be ramped up and online in around 15 minutes. This allows the utility to charge (you) fuel charges on every kWh you use while they throw away excess solar PV or wind generation.
Solarman says
“Community solar allows all customers to participate in the benefits of clean solar energy without installing panels on their own homes. Participants subscribe to a solar energy project and earn credits on their monthly utility bills for their portion of the energy the solar project produces.”
Subscription services would allow the utility to build their solar PV farm, garner subscribers and still allow the utility to “curtail” solar PV and use fueled and more expensive generation to ramp around grid demands, which ‘still’ costs ratepayers more per kWh. Without some “teeth” like making 30% daily energy storage as part of the agreement, the people will not get the best advantages of solar PV as they should. Folks, rich, poor or in between need to realize, solar PV is the (most) efficient when it is installed on the roof of the home or small business using the generated power. It is the most efficient and effective, when over generation is stored where the solar PV is installed. So, solar PV on the roof, smart ESS in the garage or it’s own NEMA 4 outdoor cabinet.
““We worked closely with ComEd to develop a strong partnership and design a joint program that delivers significant savings to qualified community solar subscribers,” said Allan Telio, senior VP of community solar at Nexamp. “We credit ComEd for their vision, leadership and enthusiasm in jointly developing this program with us to ensure it will deliver maximum benefits to customers. I hope other utilities will follow their lead.””
Sooner or later, when enough solar PV is installed in the service area, there will be a “duck curve” like what has happened in California and Hawaii. When the utility owns the solar PV farm, they will “protect” their interests by curtailing solar PV generation to bring generation to demand up, keeping the electricity rates at positive $/MWh by using fueled generation resources on the spot market at premium prices. These assets that are burning fuel can be passed along to the ratepayers as fuel charges or demand charges in the capacity market. Once again, if you install your own solar PV system on your property, you reap the rewards of non-fueled generation every day. If you install solar + storage, you have insolated yourself from constant utility “program” changes and the money you save each month can be used somewhere else in your household budget.