Get Started with Solar
How to Find and Choose a Community Solar Project
To participate in community solar, you will sign up with a project manager to subscribe to a share of their project. Active projects are listed on the Project Finder which provides detailed information about each project, including the project manager, location, utility territory, size, the date the project became operational, subscription options, and pricing options.
To get started, you’ll want to know what subscription size is right for you. This will depend on how much energy you use, so you’ll need to review your billing history to determine your typical annual electricity consumption. Our Subscription Size Calculator can recommend the right subscription size based on your annual energy use and the project’s estimated generation. Keep in mind that if your subscription produces more energy than you consume in a year, you won’t receive bill credits for that extra energy but will still pay your subscription fee, so it’s recommended that you cap your subscription size at 80% of your annual consumption to ensure you don’t over-generate. The Project Finder will show the expected annual net cost or savings a customer would experience from each project. For a more detailed look at how community solar could impact your monthly bills, enter a project’s information into our Bill Impact Calculator (.xls).
How much does it cost?
Costs vary by project, subscription type and subscription size. Costs will also vary for subscriptions designed specifically for income-qualified participants.
Costs are offset by the bill credit you will receive as a project subscriber. We work with your utility to provide on-bill subscriptions and automatically add fees and credits to your monthly bill. These fees and credits are outlined below.
As a subscriber you will earn bill credits on your electricity bill for your portion of energy generated by the solar project in the previous month. Since these rates are per kWh, subscribers should expect to see some variance in their total bill credits month to month depending on how much electricity was generated in that month.
Tier 1 Bill Credit Rates by Utility ($/kWh)
Portland General Electric | Pacific Power | Idaho Power | Effective Date |
$0.11234 | $0.0977 | $0.0848 | 1/1/2020 |
Tier 1 bill credit rates are fixed for projects participating in Tier 1.
Tier 2 Bill Credit Rates by Utility ($/kWh)
Utility | Portland General Electric | Pacific Power | Effective Date |
Residential | $0.11234 | $0.0977 | 1/25/2022 |
Non-residential | $0.101106 | $0.08793 | 1/25/2022 |
Tier 2 bill credit rates will escalate 2% each year beginning in April 2023 for both residential and non-residential customers. This is only applicable to Portland General Electric and Pacific Power customers.
You can find out if your project is Tier 1 or Tier 2 by asking your Project Manager.
Subscription fees vary by solar project and are set by Project Managers. You can find a project’s subscription fee on the description page for each project listed on the Project Finder. Like bill credits, subscription fee totals will vary somewhat each month, since they are calculated per kWh. Discounted subscription fees are available for low-income subscribers.
Projects may offer an ownership option for upfront investment instead of a monthly subscription.
Program administration fees recover the costs of operating the program. You will see individual line items on your utility bill: one for the fee that recovers the costs of the Program Administrator and one for the fee that recovers the costs of the electric utility. Program administration fees are additional to the subscription fee that is paid to the manager of the solar project you choose. Low-income customers are exempt from paying all program administration fees, and will not see program administration fees on their bill.
Current program administration fees are provided in the table below. Whereas the bill credit and subscription fee are based on variable solar generation, the program administration fees are fixed monthly amounts based on the size of your subscription and calculated on a $/kW-AC basis. Program fees are set by the Oregon Public Utility Commission, reviewed annually, and may be updated to reflect program administration costs.
Current Program Administration Fees by Utility ($/kW-AC per month)
Fee Component | Portland General Electric | Pacific Power | Idaho Power |
Program Administrator Fee | $0.85 | $0.85 | $0.85 |
Utility Fee | $0.11 | $0.20 | $0.48 |
Total Program Fee | $0.96 | $1.05 | $1.33 |
How do I choose a project?
Visit our Project Finder page to see the projects available to you and get started with a subscription.
Bill Impact Calculator
Download this resource to see how a community solar subscription may impact your monthly energy bill.
Community Solar FAQs
Frequently asked questions about the Oregon Community Solar Program, costs, eligibility, and more.
Project Finder
Interested in signing up? Start by looking at the projects available to you before contacting the Project Manager for enrollment information.
What should I expect when participating ?
The below section outlines what happens before, during, and after you sign a contract to begin subscribing to a Community Solar project.
Before signing a contract, it will be helpful to you to have completed the following steps:
- Review the resources provided above. Additional resources are available on the Subscriber Resources page.
- Estimate your subscription size using the Bill Impact Calculator above with information from your utility.
- Compare projects on the Project Finder. Low-income subscribers, please skip to the intake process.
- Once you’ve decided to move forward with a particular project, contact a Project Manager who will assist you with the intake process.
Next Steps Overview for Residential Subscribers
- Sign contract
- Verification
- Start receiving credits on your monthly utility bill
Intake Process for Low-income Residential Subscribers
Depending on the Project, low-income Participants may be recruited by either the Project Manager or by the Low-Income Facilitator. The Low-income Facilitator, Community Energy Project, assists with enrollment for all low-income subscribers.
- Phone appointment with the Low-income Facilitator to discuss the program and verify that you meet all requirements, including income and utility verification. A recent utility bill is required.
- Once verified, you will be contacted by a Project Manager to sign a contract for a project
- If there are no available projects at the time of enrollment, you’ll be placed on a waitlist and notified when a project becomes available.
- Start receiving credits on your monthly utility bill
A suitable kW-AC subscription size for a Participant is a function of three inputs:
- A Participant’s annual electricity consumption in kWh, multiplied by:
- The share of annual consumption desired to be offset by community solar (which may not exceed 100% and which is not recommended to exceed 80%), divided by:
- The community solar project’s expected annual kWh production per kW-AC. A Subscription Sizing Calculator above.
Sizing Low-Income Subscriptions
Depending on the Project, low-income Participants may be recruited by either the Project Manager or by the Low-Income Facilitator. The Program Administrator will recommend subscription sizes for the low-income Participants recruited by the Low-Income Facilitator before these participants are allocated to specific Projects. Sizing recommendations are based off of the three inputs, listed above.
Portland General Electric Customers:
A PGE customer may access and share their past energy consumption data by:- Logging in to their customer account at www.portlandgeneral.com.
- Clicking on My Usage (located in the yellow-shaded box labeled Energy Tracker in the lower right-hand box of the account interface).
- Clicking the Download My Data button that appears below the chart display on the right side of the screen, and then clicking Export (without changing the default export settings provided).
- The resulting CSV file will provide a customer’s past monthly energy consumption, and can be provided to a project manager to develop an annual consumption estimate.
Pacific Power Customers:
A Pacific Power customer may access and share their past energy consumption data by:- Logging in to their customer account at www.pacificpower.net.
- Clicking on Energy Usage in the left-hand My Account menu bar.
- Above the chart displayed on the screen, clicking the drop-down menu labeled “For the period of:” and selecting “two years” (or the greatest time period available).
- Below the chart, clicking Download Usage History (be careful not to click “Download Green Button Data” instead, as this will download the data as an XML file instead of the desired CSV file).
- The resulting CSV file will provide a customer’s past monthly energy consumption, and can be provided to a project manager to develop an annual consumption estimate.
Idaho Power Customers:
An Idaho Power customer may access and share their past energy consumption data by:- Logging in to their customer account at www.idahopower.com.
- Clicking on View Monthly Usage (located in the boxes at the top of the screen on the main page of My Account).
- Switching the view from “Display Graph” to “Display Table”.
- Click the Download link that appears at the top right side of the table.
- The resulting CSV file will provide a customer’s past monthly energy consumption, and can be provided to a project manager to develop an annual consumption estimate.
When you’ve selected a project to join and connected with a Project Manager, they will ask you to sign a contract. The Oregon Community Solar Program requires that a Disclosure Checklist is provided within each contract. Some key information within your contract is listed below:
- Project Manager contact information. Some Project Managers will have a customer service organization prepared to assist with any questions or changes regarding your account.
- Contracts provided by each Project Manager are based on standard templates that are provided on the PM Resources page. Please note that the minimum length of subscription commitment is 10 years for all projects.
- Key information must be present around fees and other charges. This should include any termination fees, transfer fees, late fees, or subscription size adjustment fees. Any of these fees are considered “off-bill” charges and your Project Manager will need to relay how these fees should be paid external to your monthly utility bill, if applicable. Low-income subscribers cannot be charged a contract termination or late payment fee.
- A detailed outline of an example schedule of billing must be present in your contract that includes an estimated yearly savings or cost.
- A dispute resolution process and contact information must be detailed in the contract.
- There is a three-day right to cancel your contract after signing with no penalty if you change your mind.
Required Customer Information
The following information is required from every Participant to be given to your Project Manager at the time of enrollment:
- Participant Name – Name of customer that signed Community Solar Participant Contract. If there are multiple names on your utility account, you are signing on behalf of all account holders
- Primary account holder, as it appears on the utility bill
- Phone Number – Participant’s preferred phone number
- Email – Participant’s preferred email address
- Customer Type (Residential, Low-Income)
- Site Address – The physical address that is being enrolled in the Program.
- Site City – The city of the physical address that is being enrolled in the Program.
- Site Zip Code – The zip code of the physical address that is being enrolled in the Program
- Electric Utility – The utility serving the Site Address (Idaho Power, Pacific Power, or Portland General Electric)
- Utility Account Number – See Subscriber Resources for sample utility bills
- Utility Meter Number
- Utility Service Agreement Number
- Community Solar Project ID – The Project Manager should enter the ID of the Project that the Participant will be subscribed to
- Community Solar Subscription Size (kW-AC)
- Demographic/Firmographic Information*
*Not required for non-low-income or commercial customers
Once you’re a subscriber within the program and have signed a contract with a Project Manager, they will be your main point of contact regarding your subscription.
Billing
If your solar project has not become operational at the time of signing a contract, you won’t begin to receive bill credits until the project has begun generating electricity for your utility. Even after generation, expect that it may take a couple of months before your community solar subscription appears on your bill. Depending on when you receive your existing utility bill, there may be months when you receive no bill credits or fees and instead receive bill credits and fees for two-months’ worth of solar production on the next bill. Please refer to the Aligning Your Bill Cycle with Community Solar Credits and Fees guide under Subscriber Resources page for more information. In addition, there will be fluctuation in bill charges or savings, depending on the time of the year. Since solar generation is higher in the summer months, expect your bill credit rate to be higher in the summer and lower in the winter months. If you have any questions regarding billing, please reach out to your Project Manager.
Late or Partial Payments
There are different considerations on what a “late” bill payment is for the utility versus a Project Manager. Utility bill payments take precedent over Community Solar subscriptions in terms of payment allocation, and therefore a partial utility bill payment could result in a late fee for your Community Solar subscription. It is important to communicate with your Project Manager when this occurs.
Fees
Any additional fees are collected off-bill and the rate and method of required payment must be outlined in your contract. Fees could include a contract transfer, early termination, subscription size change, or late fee. Low-income participants are exempt from contract transfer fees, early termination fees, and late fees. A subscription size fee may not be charged to a low-income participant for reducing the size of a subscription due to their new site using less electricity annually than the subscription generates, or if the low-income participant reduces their subscription to avoid oversubscription.
Equal Pay
Equal pay customers are eligible to participate in the Program but be aware that due to variation in monthly solar generation, their bill will not be equal each month.
Risk of Oversubscription
If a participant’s community solar subscription generates more kWh than they consume over the course of a billing year (which begins in April and ends in March), the participant will be charged for the repayment of any excess kWh they’ve received through an annual reconciliation process.
To minimize the risk of oversubscription, it is recommended that subscriptions be sized to produce no more than 80% of participants’ annual consumption, so that they are not at risk of oversubscribing. However, oversubscription may still occur due to unforeseen factors such as weather and usage habits.
Every April, a comparison of the actual kWh credited from the subscription will be made against actual kWh electricity used at the site, prorated as necessary, based on when subscription starts. The value of excess kWh credited, should there be any, will be recovered from participants and donated at the as-available-avoided cost rate for use in low income programs of the electric company serving the Participant. If this is the case, an adjustment shall be included on the Participant’s next utility bill indicated the amount due.
For low-income participants, if there is a balance owed from oversubscription, the customer’s net savings will be used to repay the oversubscribed amount until the full payment is recouped. This means that a low-income Participant that oversubscribes may not receive any savings from their subscription for some time, but their bills will never increase as a result of community solar.
The Program Administration team will be providing quarterly checks for participants and notifying their Project Managers if they are believed to be at risk of oversubscription.
Subscription Variance
Oregon Community Solar subscribers will experience variability on their monthly utility bills in terms of subscription fees and generation credits. Since solar radiation varies throughout the year in Oregon, customers will receive a majority of their bill credits in the summer months.
Changes to your Utility Account or Subscription Status
You will need to contact your Project Manager to inform them of any changes to your utility account or subscription status, such as a moving to a different address, transferring your subscription to another participant, or requesting to cancel your subscription , or legally changing your name. Your Project Manager is responsible for updating the information that is sent to your utility for billing purposes.
Additional Assistance
Questions about how to sign up? Contact our call center!
Community Solar Program Support
Toll-free phone: 1-800-481-0510
(Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Monday – Friday)
Email: [email protected]
Community Solar Program Administrator
421 SW Oak St, Suite 300, Portland, OR 97204
If you are subscriber in a community solar project and have a question or complaint, please contact your Community Solar project manager. Their contact information can be found on your subscription agreement, the accompanying disclosure checklist or the Community Solar Program website. If you need help finding the contact information for your Project Manager, please call 1.800.481.0510 or email [email protected].