Community solar provides both economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy to residents and businesses who cannot install or do not want a solar array on their property. Community solar also expands access to low-to-moderate income residents who typically would not be able to afford the large up-front cost of a rooftop system. With community solar, all commercial, industrial, municipal, and residential customers can benefit from solar energy.
The design of community solar is what makes it the most versatile segment of the solar industry. Community solar developers build local solar farms that typically range between 0.5 and 10 megawatts (MW) in a participating utility’s service area and connect to the existing electrical grid.
Businesses, municipalities, organizations, and residents can subscribe to the community solar project instead of putting solar modules on their roofs. These subscriptions offset the subscribers’ property’s electrical usage with solar energy, by sending solar energy generated by the solar project directly to the power grid. Subscriptions reduce the dependence on fossil fuels or brown power, that is needed to power the utility’s ratepayers. Additionally, the subscriber receives solar credits from the utility for the energy that is produced by the off-site solar array. The solar credits reduce the subscribers’ overall utility bill, saving them money.
