Situations
Community solar vs rooftop solar
Four states, four statutes, four genuinely different products wearing the same name.
Written by HyreSolar Research team Research and analysis
Audited by HyreSolar Research team Data audit and fact check
The short answer
The four things sold under one name
The phrase "community solar" is used as though it described a single product available in varying degrees around the country. It does not. It describes a legal arrangement that each state built separately, and the arrangements differ in what you receive, who pays you, whether the price can exceed the benefit, and whether you have any recourse.
A bill-credit programme. You sign a subscription with an organisation that owns an array somewhere in your utility's territory. The utility applies a credit to your own bill in proportion to your share of the array's output. You pay the subscriber organisation something less than the credit is worth, and the difference is your saving. This is Minnesota and Maryland. It is what most people mean by community solar.
A production-incentive programme. There is no bill credit. A state programme pays an incentive on the electricity the project generates, and your share of that incentive is your return. This is Washington, and it is administered through a university extension energy programme rather than through your utility bill. Whether it is available to you at all depends on whether your utility has chosen to participate.
A green tariff. You pay your utility a premium to be served from a renewable resource. This is California's shared renewables programme. The statute is explicit that participating customers pay a renewable generation rate plus administrative costs. You pay more, not less. The product is the attribution of renewable generation, not a saving.
And virtual net metering, which is not a product at all. It is the accounting mechanism the bill-credit programmes are built on: a way of measuring the difference between what the utility supplied and what your subscription is credited with, on one bill. Anyone describing virtual net metering as though it were a programme you can join has confused the plumbing with the house.
These are not variations on a theme. A Minnesotan and a Californian using the phrase "I have community solar" are describing arrangements with opposite cash-flow directions.
What each statute actually creates
| State | What you get | Who pays it | The catch in the statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | A bill credit proportional to your share of the garden's output | Your utility, on your own bill | The programme in the operative subdivisions applies to one utility, and new capacity is capped annually by statute |
| Maryland | A bill credit through virtual net energy metering, either as a reduction in metered kilowatt-hours or as a monetary credit worth no less | Your electric company, under a commission-approved tariff | The programme start is defined by a regulatory event, not a date. Whether it has occurred we did not verify |
| Washington | A share of a state production incentive, capped at $5,000 per project participant | A state programme, administered outside your utility bill | Utility participation is voluntary and a utility may terminate on fifteen days' notice |
| California | Bill credits at class average retail generation cost plus a renewables adjustment value | Your utility, but you pay a renewable generation rate for the privilege | You pay a premium. And since April 2023 the commission may authorise a utility to terminate its programme by advice letter |
Read from the statutory text of each state on 3 September 2026. Four states only. Absence from this table means we did not read that state, not that it lacks a programme.
The column that matters most is the last one. Every one of these four statutes contains a mechanism by which a legally existing programme can be practically unavailable to you: a single-utility limit, an unverified regulatory trigger, a voluntary opt-out, or an outright termination power.
A statute is not a programme, and a programme is not availability
Confusing a statute with a programme is the error to avoid before any other. A page that says "community solar is available in your state" because a statute exists is making a claim the statute does not support.
Minnesota confines the operative programme to the public utility identified in the statute, and caps new capacity at 100 megawatts a year through 2026, then 80, then 60. A cap on new capacity is precisely the mechanism by which a live programme has nothing to sell you this year.
Washington makes utility participation voluntary and allows a participating utility to terminate on fifteen days' notice, after which no new certifications may be accepted for its customers.
California has authorised the commission, since 1 April 2023, to let a participating utility terminate its green tariff shared renewables programme by advice letter. Whether any utility has done so we did not verify, and neither has anyone writing that California "has community solar".
Maryland's programme start is defined as the earlier of the first subscriber-organisation petition after the commission adopts the relevant regulations, or six months after those regulations. It is an event, not a date.
The only reliable way to know whether you can subscribe is to ask your own utility. Not a developer, and not a map.
The price cap is the single most useful consumer protection, and it exists in half the states we read
Most consumer guidance about community solar is about disclosure: what the seller must tell you. Disclosure rules matter, but they put the burden on you to read and understand. Two of the four states did something stronger and simpler.
Minnesota makes it unlawful for a subscription to cost more than it produces. The statute says the cost of a subscriber's subscription "must not exceed the value of the subscriber's community solar garden bill credit". For a low- or moderate-income subscriber it must not exceed 90 percent of the credit and must not include any fees at the time the subscription is executed.
Maryland does the same thing with the same architecture. A subscriber organisation or subscription coordinator may not charge a residential subscriber a subscription rate more than the monetary value of the bill credit, may not charge a low- or moderate-income subscriber more than 90 percent of that value, and may not set a consolidated-billing charge above the bill credit's monetary value.
Think about what that rule does. It makes the product structurally incapable of losing you money on its face. Not "unlikely to". Unlawful. Every disclosure rule in the world asks you to spot a bad deal; this one makes the bad deal illegal to offer.
Washington and California contain no equivalent. Washington's protection is a mandatory eight-item disclosure form. California's programme is one you pay a premium for by design, so a cap on price relative to benefit would be incoherent. Neither is a scandal, but the difference should change how carefully you read a contract.
What none of them cap is the escalator. A subscription price that starts below your bill credit can be written to rise faster than the credit does. The Minnesota and Maryland caps are stated as rules the price must satisfy, and we did not find text in either statute that indexes the cap over time or sets out how it is tested in later years. Ask specifically how the price changes and against what.
Consumer protection, compared clause by clause
| Protection | Minnesota | Maryland | Washington | Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit check banned | Yes, all residential subscribers | Low- and moderate-income subscribers only | Not addressed | Yes, residential |
| Exit or termination fee banned | Yes, all residential subscribers | Not addressed in the statute | Not addressed; transfer costs must be disclosed | Low-income customers only |
| Price capped at the bill credit | Yes, 90% for LMI, no fees at execution | Yes, 90% for LMI | No | Not found |
| Mandated disclosure | Written, plain language: rates, terms, termination fees, right to cancel | Delegated to commission regulation | Statutory eight-item form, including the methodology behind production projections | Standardised consumer disclosure forms |
| Cooling-off period in days | None in the statute | None in the statute | None in the statute | Not identified |
| Your route if it goes wrong | Commissioner enforcement, revocation of the garden's participation. No private right of action in the section | Not specified in the section read | Per se Consumer Protection Act violation, which carries a private right of action | Programme rules set by the commission |
Compiled from the statutory text of each state, read 3 September 2026. The Virginia column was obtained through a rendering extraction rather than raw text, and its clause numbering should be re-read before being quoted.
Read the last row twice. Minnesota bans more practices than Washington does, but Minnesota's remedy is that the regulator can revoke a developer's participation in the programme. That punishes the developer. It does not compensate you.
The cooling-off period nobody can cite
Minnesota's statute requires the seller to disclose "the right to cancel a community solar garden subscription". It does not create that right, and it names no number of days.
That distinction is the whole point. The statute assumes a cancellation right exists in the contract and requires that you be told about it. The content of the right, including how long you have, lives in the subscription contract, whose form must be filed with the commissioner as part of the project application.
We found no statutory cooling-off period expressed in days in any of the four states. Anyone who tells you "this state gives you thirty days to cancel" is either reading a public utility commission regulation we did not retrieve, reading a specific contract, or making it up. Ask which. Then ask to see it in writing before you sign.
What a subscription actually is, and what it is not
The most common misunderstanding is ownership. People describe a subscription as owning part of a solar farm. The statutes are clear that it is not.
Minnesota defines a subscription as "a contract between a subscriber and subscriber organization". That is the entire statutory definition. Not a share, not an interest in equipment, not a property right. A contract.
Maryland is even more explicit about what the contract entitles you to: a subscription is "the portion of the electricity generated by a community solar energy generating system that is credited to a subscriber". You are buying credited output. The hardware is somebody else's.
Nothing about this is dishonest, and it has real advantages. You are not responsible for maintenance, insurance, inverter replacement, or what happens when the array's owner sells. You have no roof penetrations and no roof at all in the conversation. You have nothing to disclose to a buyer and nothing to transfer at closing, which is the single largest practical problem with a leased rooftop system.
But it also means you are exposed to a counterparty rather than to weather. With a rooftop system your risk is that the equipment underperforms. With a subscription your risk is largely that an organisation does something you did not expect, and the statutes differ sharply in what happens to you then.
And the credit rate can depend on who you are. Minnesota's statute sets different purchase rates by subscriber class: 100 percent of the average residential retail rate for a low- or moderate-income subscriber, 85 percent for other residential subscribers, 80 percent for master-metered affordable housing, and lower rates for various commercial classes. That tiering is unusual, rarely mentioned, and directly determines what a subscription is worth to you.
The vocabulary, because the terms are used loosely and mean different things
- Community solar garden
- Minnesota's statutory term. A facility that generates electricity by a ground- or roof-mounted photovoltaic device, is owned and operated by a subscriber organisation, and for which subscribers receive a bill credit in proportion to the size of their subscription.
- Subscription
- In Minnesota, simply a contract between subscriber and subscriber organisation. In Maryland, the portion of the electricity generated that is credited to a subscriber. In neither case is it ownership of equipment.
- Subscriber organisation
- The entity that owns and operates the array and sells subscriptions. It is your counterparty. Its financial reporting obligations, where they exist, are the closest thing you have to visibility into its health.
- Virtual net energy metering
- The accounting mechanism, defined in Maryland as the measurement of the difference between the kilowatt-hours or value supplied by the electric company and the kilowatt-hours or value attributable to your subscription. An operation on a bill, not a wire.
- Green tariff
- A different product entirely. You pay your utility a premium to be served from a renewable resource. California's shared renewables programme is this kind, which is why calling it community solar misleads.
- Production incentive
- Washington's mechanism. A state payment on generated electricity, administered outside your utility bill, capped per participant. Not a bill credit and not dependent on your own consumption.
- Unsubscribed energy
- Output from the array that nobody has subscribed to. Minnesota credits it to the subscriber organisation at the utility's avoided cost; Maryland banks it as a credit the organisation may reallocate within a year. Worth asking about, because it indicates how full the project is.
- Consolidated billing
- One combined bill from the utility covering both your electricity and your subscription. Minnesota requires the utility to offer it and requires that you may elect it rather than be required to use it. Maryland caps the fee the utility may charge the organisation for it.
What happens if you move, which is where most guidance goes wrong
A rooftop system stays with the house. A subscription travels with you, but only inside a boundary that is easy to state and often omitted.
In every one of the four states that addresses it, the boundary is the utility service territory. Minnesota's statute says a subscription "is transferable and portable, but only within the utility's Minnesota service territory". Maryland lets a subscriber who changes address maintain the subscription if the new address is in the same electric territory, and bars both the electric company and the subscriber organisation from terminating the subscription for a change of address that meets that condition. Virginia's programme rules must reasonably allow portability, including retaining a subscription when a subscriber moves within the same utility's service territory.
Washington's provision is narrower and worth reading exactly. It addresses a low-income subscriber in a project certified under the relevant section who moves within 120 months of certification: the subscription may continue if the new premises is served by the same utility, and if the subscriber leaves that utility or terminates, the certification follows the system and participation must be transferred by the administrator to a new qualifying subscriber.
So "you can take it with you when you move" is true across town and false across a service territory line. Moving to a neighbouring town served by a different utility ends the arrangement, and what happens then is a contract question, not a statutory one. In a state that has not banned exit fees, or has banned them only for low-income customers, that is the moment the fee arrives.
Maryland adds one protection worth knowing: a contract entered into during the pilot programme or the programme remains in effect according to its terms, including after the termination of the programme. Your contract survives the programme's death. Whether that is good news depends entirely on the contract.
What to ask before subscribing to anything
- 1 Ask your utility, not the seller, whether the programme is open
Every one of the four statutes contains a route by which a live programme is closed to you: an annual capacity cap, a voluntary utility opt-out, a termination power, or a regulatory trigger that may not have fired. The utility knows. A developer's website does not.
- 2 Ask whether the price is capped at the value of your bill credit
In Minnesota and Maryland it must be, by statute, and 90 percent for a low- or moderate-income subscriber. Elsewhere it need not be. If the answer is anything other than a clear yes with a citation, treat the subscription as one that can cost more than it returns.
- 3 Ask how the price changes over time and what it is measured against
This is the question the price cap does not obviously answer. A subscription whose price escalates on a fixed percentage while your bill credit tracks a retail rate that moves differently is a bet, and you should know you are making it.
- 4 Ask what your cancellation right actually is, in days, and where it is written
It is not in these statutes. Minnesota requires it to be disclosed and sets no number. So the number, if there is one, is in your contract or in a commission regulation. Get the document.
- 5 Ask what happens if you move out of the utility's territory
Not out of the state, and not out of the city. Out of the territory. That is the boundary every statute uses, and it is the one nobody mentions.
- 6 Ask whether there is an exit fee and for whom it is banned
Minnesota bans it for all residential subscribers. Virginia bans it for low-income customers only. Maryland's statute does not address it. Washington requires transfer costs to be disclosed rather than banned.
- 7 Ask who you complain to, and whether you can sue
Of the four, only Washington makes a violation a per se consumer protection act violation, which carries a private right of action. Minnesota gives the commissioner power to revoke the garden's participation, which does nothing for your money.
- 8 Ask for the production projection and the methodology behind it
Washington requires both by statute, which tells you the methodology is the part worth having. A projection without a method is a number somebody chose.
- 9 Ask whether you must accept consolidated billing
In Minnesota you may elect it and cannot be required to use it. One bill is convenient; it also means the two amounts move together in a way that makes an unfavourable subscription harder to notice.
When a subscription genuinely beats a roof, and when it does not
The comparison is usually framed as second-best versus best. That is not right, and the honest version depends on facts about you rather than about the technology.
A subscription is the better answer when you do not control a roof. If you rent, if you live in a condominium whose association will not approve a common-element installation, if your roof is shaded, badly oriented, or too small, then the comparison is not between two ways of getting solar. It is between a subscription and nothing.
It is also better when your time horizon is short. A rooftop system is a twenty-five-year proposition whose economics assume you stay or that a buyer values it. A subscription that is portable within the territory and carries no exit fee has almost no time commitment by comparison.
And it is better when you do not want to own equipment. No inverter replacement, no monitoring, no warranty claim, no roof penetration, no disclosure at sale, no transfer at closing. Those are real costs of ownership that rarely appear in a payback calculation.
A roof is better when you want the asset. An owned rooftop system is property. It can be paired with a battery for backup, which no subscription can do, because a subscription is an accounting entry and cannot keep your lights on. It is not exposed to a counterparty's solvency, a programme's termination, or a commission's regulations.
And a roof is better when the subscription price is not capped. In a state with no statutory cap, the entire economic case rests on a contract you must evaluate yourself, against an escalator you must model yourself. In Minnesota and Maryland the statute has done part of that work for you. Elsewhere it has not.
The comparison that is never right is on price per kilowatt-hour alone. The two products differ in what you own, what you are exposed to, how long you are committed, and what happens when you move. A per-unit comparison hides every one of those.
What we could not verify, stated plainly
Whether any of these programmes is open today. We read statutes. We did not read commission dockets, tariff sheets, advice letters or capacity allocations, and every one of the four statutes contains a mechanism that can close the programme without amending the statute.
Anything about states not named here. Hawaii, Colorado, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts were attempted and failed, in most cases because the state legislature's website refused the request. New York's programme in particular rests on public service commission orders rather than a standalone statute. Their absence from this page means we could not read them, and nothing more. Do not read a silence here as a finding.
Maryland's consumer-protection detail. The statute directs the commission to adopt consumer protection regulations, so the operative detail on disclosure forms, cancellation windows and complaint procedure lives in the state regulations, which we did not retrieve.
California's virtual net metering mechanics. The statute points at virtual net metering tariffs without defining them. The commission decisions and tariff sheets that actually define them were not retrieved.
Any provider's terms. We name no company and quote no contract. Subscription terms vary by provider, and every contract-level statement on this page is written as something to ask rather than something to expect.
Method and limitations
What was read
The Minnesota community solar garden statute in full, including its definitions, the subscriber-class credit rates, the consumer protection prohibitions, the cost ceiling, the portability provision and the enforcement subdivisions.
The Maryland community solar energy generating systems programme statute in full, including the definition of the system and of a subscription, the virtual net energy metering definition, the price caps, the credit-check restriction, the consolidated-billing fee cap and the change-of-address provisions.
The Washington community solar programme statute and the associated annual production incentive certification statute, for the administrator eligibility rules, the project size limits, the incentive caps, the eight-item disclosure form, the voluntary participation and fifteen-day termination provision, and the consumer protection act hook.
The California green tariff shared renewables statute, for the payment obligation, the credit formula, the capacity limits and the termination authority.
The Virginia shared solar statute for a Phase II utility, obtained through a rendering extraction because the state's own site served a script shell with no statutory text to a direct request.
What that limits
Four states, plus a partial fifth. This is not a national survey and must not be read as one. States are absent because their legislatures' websites refused the request or because no reachable URL could be derived without a search engine, not because they lack programmes.
Statutes only. No commission regulations, tariff sheets, advice letters or dockets were retrieved, which is where operational status, disclosure forms and cancellation windows actually live.
The Virginia clause numbering came from an extraction rather than from raw statutory text and should be verified before it is quoted anywhere.
No provider contract was read, and no provider is named. Everything on this page about what your agreement says is framed as a question to ask.
Questions
Is community solar cheaper than rooftop solar?
Do I own part of the solar farm if I subscribe?
How many days do I have to cancel a community solar subscription?
What happens to my subscription if I move?
Can I sue if a community solar provider misleads me?
Can I get backup power from community solar?
Is community solar available in my state?
Does a community solar subscription help me sell my house?
Why do the credit rates differ between subscribers in Minnesota?
What is virtual net metering?
Written and audited by
HyreSolar Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the tariff, the code section, the federal filing or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. That rule has cost us whole sections, and it is the reason the rest can be trusted.
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- primary sources read and cited
- 220
- figures with a retrieval date
- 115
- federal and state government sources
- 66
- researched pages published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, federal data from the agency that collects it, code text from the adopted edition, manufacturer claims from the data sheet. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we go and read the source.
- Every figure carries its provenance. A named document and the date we retrieved it, so you can check it and so you know how old it is. Retrieval dates are not decoration: an EIA rate from May is a different fact from an EIA rate from August.
- We publish what we could not verify. Every research page carries a section naming the things we tried to establish and could not, and why. A paywalled standard, a state website that refused the request, a manufacturer that publishes no figure at all.
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Data as of Statutory text read on 3 September 2026. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- Minnesota Statutes section 216B.1641, Community Solar Garden — Source for the definition of a community solar garden and of a subscription, the single-utility scope of the operative programme, the subscriber-class credit rates, the 5 megawatt capacity limit with at least 25 subscribers per megawatt and the 40 percent single-subscriber limit, the annual capacity caps, the low- and moderate-income allocation requirements, the prohibitions on credit checks, exit fees, enrolment without consent and misleading conduct, the plain-language disclosure duty including the right to cancel, the cost ceiling at the value of the bill credit and 90 percent for LMI subscribers, the consolidated billing election, the annual subscriber reporting duty, the portability limit to the utility service territory, and the enforcement and revocation provisions. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Maryland Code, Public Utilities section 7-306.2, Community Solar Energy Generating Systems Program — Source for the definition of a community solar energy generating system, the definition of a subscription as the portion of generated electricity credited to a subscriber, the statutory definition of virtual net energy metering, the requirement that all rate classes may participate, the treatment of unsubscribed output, the subscription price caps and the 90 percent LMI cap, the credit-check and sign-up-fee restriction for LMI subscribers, the bar on requiring a subscriber to stay with one supplier, the consolidated-billing fee cap, the change-of-address protections, the event-based programme start, and the survival of contracts after programme termination. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Revised Code of Washington 82.16.170, Community solar programs — Source for the purpose clause, the administrator eligibility rules, the project size range, the eight-item statutory disclosure form including the requirement to disclose the methodology behind production projections and the costs of transferring an interest, the administration fee notice, the low-income subscriber portability provision, the administrator information duties, and the provision making a violation a per se unfair or deceptive act under the state consumer protection act. The section expires 30 June 2038. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Revised Code of Washington 82.16.165, Annual production incentive certification — Source for the incentive caps of 5,000 dollars per community solar project participant and for residential-scale systems, 25,000 dollars for commercial-scale and 35,000 dollars for shared commercial solar, and for the provision that utility participation is voluntary and a utility may terminate participation on fifteen days notice, after which no new certifications may be accepted for its customers. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- California Public Utilities Code section 2833, Green Tariff Shared Renewables Program — Source for the requirement that participating customers pay a renewable generation rate plus administrative costs, for the bill credit formula based on class average retail generation cost plus a renewables adjustment value, for the 20 megawatt resource limit and the 600 megawatt statewide participation cap, for the per-customer subscription limits, and for the authority, effective 1 April 2023, for the commission to authorise a participating utility to terminate its programme by advice letter. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Code of Virginia section 56-594.3, Shared solar programs; Phase II Utility — Cited for the statutory instruction to the State Corporation Commission to prohibit credit checks for residential subscribers, to prohibit early termination fees and credit reporting for low-income customers, to adopt standardised consumer disclosure forms, and to allow for portability of subscriptions within the same utility service territory. Obtained through a rendering extraction because a direct request returned a script shell containing no statutory text, so the clause numbering should be verified before being quoted. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
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