{"id":4873,"date":"2020-11-24T16:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/?p=4873"},"modified":"2020-11-24T16:10:56","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T21:10:56","slug":"community-solar-as-a-community-solar-subscriber-what-should-i-be-looking-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/2020\/11\/24\/community-solar-as-a-community-solar-subscriber-what-should-i-be-looking-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Solar &#8211; As a community solar subscriber, what should I be looking for?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/10\/community-solar-blog-series-header-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4815 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/10\/community-solar-blog-series-header-1-300x152.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"152\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/10\/community-solar-blog-series-header-1-300x152.png 300w, https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/10\/community-solar-blog-series-header-1-768x389.png 768w, https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/10\/community-solar-blog-series-header-1.png 906w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">By <a href=\"mailto:david.comis@maryland.gov\">David Comis<\/a>, Senior Energy Program Manager<br \/>\nThis is part four of a 7 part series on community solar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Please note, the comments in this blog are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the views of the Maryland Energy Administration or the State of Maryland.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>First, read the subscriber agreement from top to bottom. The agreement may be for 20+ years and involve many thousands of dollars.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If they will not let you read the entire agreement in advance, it\u2019s not worth doing business with them. Also, the agreement summary sheet is NOT the agreement. If they say that they will send you the agreement after you sign up, ask for the agreement again. If supplying the agreement becomes an issue, you may want to consider other vendors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Key items in the agreement include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The term of the agreement (in months or years),<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Methods, conditions and costs to get out of the agreement early (if needed),<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Deposits and fees associated with the agreement,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Methods for settling disputes,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The method of determining cost.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In some cases the agreement will provide a cost for the first year (say $0.10\/kWh) and an amount that it will increase each year (called an annual escalator).\u00a0 It is not unusual for the escalator to be in the vicinity of 2.9% each year, meaning that the rate is 2.9% higher than it was the previous year. For those that are mathematically inclined, it means the rate in year N is:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">R<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">N<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">=R<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">*(1+escalator rate)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">(N-1)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">where R<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is the rate in the initial (first year) rate and N is the year number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Often, the rate will be a discount from a utility set rate, for example the rate will always be 10% below the electricity rate paid for standard offer service (i.e., the rate you pay the utility company if you do not select a specific energy supplier).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Will you benefit from signing up for community solar?\u00a0 Well, it depends. If your agreement indicates that you will save a fixed percentage from standard offer service, then you should save money each and every month (assuming you would have used the default standard offer service from the utility company). However, you will now need to pay both the utility company and the community solar company separately each month as currently consolidated billing has not been authorized.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If your agreement is designed to have an initial year discount with an annual escalator, then the amount of cost benefit is based on the ratio of your annual escalator and the increase in the cost of electricity from the utility company which will vary with time.\u00a0 If the annual escalator is larger than the rate at which the utility power cost goes up, then your annual benefit from using community solar will get smaller each year, and at some point you may actually pay a bit more than the utility rate. If, on the other hand, the escalator rate is lower than the rate of increase of the utility rate, then you should benefit every year by increasing amounts.\u00a0 It&#8217;s up to you to consider the benefit of each agreement and sign up with a company that offers terms that are acceptable to you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By David Comis, Senior Energy Program Manager This is part four of a 7 part series on community solar. Please note, the comments in this blog are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the views of the Maryland Energy Administration or the State of Maryland.\u00a0 First,<a href=\"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/2020\/11\/24\/community-solar-as-a-community-solar-subscriber-what-should-i-be-looking-for\/\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8230;Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[42,25,10],"tags":[72,83,90,154,155,81,73,89,82],"class_list":["post-4873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-main","category-news","tag-choice","tag-clean-energy","tag-community-solar","tag-energy-choice","tag-equity","tag-ppa","tag-psc","tag-solar-energy","tag-subscriber"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4874,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions\/4874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}