Riverside officials are thinking of promoting community solar power programs to village residents as a way to go even greener and save money on their electricity bills.
At the village board’s Nov. 21 meeting, trustees discussed the programs, which could grant residents credits on their electricity bills in exchange for subscriptions to a solar power farm somewhere, after extending Riverside’s 100% green energy aggregation program for another year in the spring. At the time, Trustee Aberdeen Marsh-Ozga named solar power as a potential alternative to green energy aggregation, so the board directed village staff to look into it.
While the board appears to have concluded the village should promote community solar programs alongside its annual energy aggregation program, trustees agreed to discuss it again at a meeting in January, as two board members were absent at the meeting.
What is community solar?
As Village Clerk Ethan Sowl explained to trustees, community solar programs give consumers a chance to reap the benefits of solar power without installing solar panels on their homes.
“You subscribe to a portion of a community solar garden somewhere, and then you receive that benefit,” Sowl said. “You can see, without community solar, that someone would just get their normal electric bill from ComEd. With community solar, residents would get two electric bills every month.”
The regular electric bill would come separately from the community solar bill; that regular bill would contain credits from the solar program that grant you a discount while the solar bill, which accounts for the credits, comes with its own discount of about 10% to 20%, meaning residents are guaranteed to see savings on the overall price they pay for electricity.
Sowl explained the other differences between community solar and electric aggregation programs, namely that residents must opt into solar programs while opting out of the village’s aggregation program and that contracts for aggregation are approved by the village board while residents must sign individual contracts to sign up for community solar.
“The village would not ever engage with a company to implement a community solar program; it would be more of an informational campaign,” he said.
He added that about 12% of Riverside households opted out of the electric aggregation program this year, which he said was comparable to other aggregation programs across Illinois.
Sowl said village staff recommended the village promote community solar without endorsing a specific program for residents; he also said staff advised against pushing community solar at the same time as the village maintains its energy aggregation program.
“This is possible. This can be done; however, staff is not recommending to do this, as it would be very confusing to residents,” he said. “We already frequently get contacted during the aggregation renewal period from residents on how the program works … While we publish a great deal of information on it, we still experience a consistent lack of awareness on the program.”
Trustees’ thoughts
Marsh-Ozga said she saw the upsides of both forms of green energy.
“I hate to lose the ease of administration of an aggregation program, but I also see that the increase in costs over time in that program has impacted some residents,” she said. “I would be interested [in pursuing community solar], though, because community solar really offers the opportunity to go with a known, green, renewable form of energy that you’re subscribing to and achieve savings off the ComEd rate, not to mention our higher aggregated rate.”
The rate most Riversiders are paying for electricity this year is 8.09 cents per kilowatt-hour; the ComEd rate, as of Oct. 1, is 6.47 cents per kWh.
Marsh-Ozga lauded a chart that Sowl included in agenda documents that compared aggregation and community solar side-by-side.
“I think that if we made a careful investment in education and presented the programs side-by-side like this, we could continue with an aggregation program and say, ‘If you’re going to opt out, whether it be for financial reasons or you like to know where your [electricity] is coming from specifically, here’s an option that will be both green and save you money,’” she said. “I don’t like the idea of just opening it up to residents to go searching for the lowest-cost provider, because in many cases that’s powered by fossil fuels, and that defeats the whole purpose.”
Trustee Jill Mateo said she was glad the board was discussing its aggregation program, as when voters approved a referendum in 2012 to allow Riverside to aggregate electricity, the rate was “almost half of what ComEd was.”
“The average household saved $400 a year. It’s been a long time since we’ve had those savings,” she said.
Mateo asked if the 12% opt out rate reflected that more people were opting out this year; Sowl said he recalled about 8% to 12% of residents had opted out of the previous two aggregation contracts, which together account for Riverside’s electricity from 2020 through 2024.
Village Manager Jessica Frances later added that according to Riverside’s aggregation consultant, communities are slowly seeing opt-out rates increase over time due to the rates now being at a premium compared to ComEd.
Trustee Cristin Evans said she supported Riverside pursuing both green energy programs despite the lack of clarity residents had over aggregation earlier this year. She said she favored aggregation over community solar.
“I did see the pushback and feedback after the last opt-out period and did notice misinformation, confusion, fear, distrust, and I think that the way to address that is through better communication on the village’s part,” she said. “It may be really difficult to explain, but I just think we need to do better. I would like to do both. I understand that if we are going to move away from the aggregation program, it would be nice to do both, but if we’re not going to do both, then I would like to stay where we are, with the aggregation program the way it is.”
Trustee Alex Gallegos also threw his support behind Riverside pursuing both options.
“I thought we’d be a lot further in solar power than we are today ever since I had my Texas Instruments solar calculator back in 1980-something,” he joked. “I think we could probably do both as well. I do see people wanting to not be part of the aggregation, as we have other alternative sources of energy, so I think that option might be best.”
Frances said she recommended amending the village’s 2025 budget, assuming the board wanted to promote community solar next year, before committing to the program.
“Our consultant for aggregation is only going to answer aggregation questions, and we’re going to have a problem … we do get a [large] volume of questions, just relative to the aggregation, and then you do an overlay of solar,” she said. “I don’t know if it would behoove us to recommend a particular solar group, simply for the fact that we don’t negotiate the contracts. If a resident gets into a bad agreement — and I’m not saying they would, but we have to look at it from a couple different angles — we don’t want a resident becoming upset with us because we advocated for a particular solar program.”
Village President Douglas Pollock said — based on the trustees’ thoughts and Frances’ recommendation — village staff should look into how Riverside would manage the extra volume of resident questions and how that management could impact the budget before bringing the discussion back to the board in the new year.
“Hopefully, when they bring that back, we’ll have a full board, because I’m hearing not full agreement, necessarily, on doing both, so I think it’ll be prudent to have a full board to weigh in, but also, we obviously need to answer the budget question,” he said.
