New York Consolidates Billing for Community Solar as it Races Towards 6 Gigawatt Goal

The New York Public Service Commission adopted a measure to consolidate the utility bills of Community Distributed Generation (CDG) customers in a bid to reduce operational costs and broaden access to the technology, according to a Dec.12 press release.

CDG systems, such as community solar, offer customers that prefer not to install solar directly on their property, or who face economic or geographic barriers to doing so, the opportunity to lower their electric bills using clean renewable energy. Consolidated billing represents an important opportunity to simplify the subscription process while reducing soft costs associated with CDG. It is also more convenient for CDG customers as they will no longer have to receive two separate monthly bills- one from their utility company and a separate one from the solar developer.

Currently, while the credits for renewable energy appear directly on the CDG subscribers’ utility bills, the CDG sponsor must also send the customer a separate bill for the subscription charge and have systems in place to collect that charge. Under consolidated billing, the subscription charges will be automatically deducted from the renewable energy credits by the utility and sent to the CDG sponsor, based on a percentage set by the CDG sponsor. As this percentage must be below 95 percent, CDG  members participating in consolidated billing will receive a guaranteed bill reduction, and therefore guaranteed monthly savings, of at least five percent.

According to the regulator, the adoption of consolidated billing will support the completion and cost-effective operation of the 1.1 gigawatts of community solar currently in development and the development of new CDG as the state targets the NY-Sun 6 gigawatts distributed solar goal.