First Solar Bank

The Connecticut Green Bank is tackling these issues in the program, its Solar for All program. This program provides solar energy answers to scale in LMI communities. This partnership combines the Green Bank’s LMI renewables financing resources with solar energy efficiency and clean energy products.

This provides LMI homeowners a solar lease along with energy efficiency measures, regardless of participants’ income or credit. Since the beginning, over 900 low-income verified households have signed up to go solar. The solar penetration in Connecticut’s low-income communities has skyrocketed by 188 percent.

Supporting Deployment

The Connecticut Green Bank was created through legislation and is the country’s first full-scale Green Bank. It supports clean energy deployment that includes single-family residential homes, multifamily properties, and commercial and institutional buildings.

It is a government supported organization that partners with investors to establish low-cost, long-term sustainable financing to maximize public funds. The bank launched the Residential Solar Investment Program (RSIP) to give up-front rebates and performance-based incentives (PBIs) for solar PV installations on owner-occupied residential properties through a declining block model.

Since it’s inception the state has experience a tremendous boost in its residential solar market. To rectify this gap, the bank established a LMI PBI within the RSIP that was about three times higher than the market rate PBI.

The incentive is available to third-party-owned solar PV installations that serve LMI customers. It enables qualified contractors to offer more economical pricing to customers. To qualify, contractors must respond to an open RFQ with their proposed product pricing, marketing strategy, and general qualifications.

The additional requirements reassure that the bank-supported LMI solar projects will have a positive economic impact for customers, are able to leverage all available revenue streams, and give reliable consumer protection.

Solving Barriers

Customers who go solar in Connecticut pay $60-$110 a monthly for a 4.5-8 kW system. They get an average net savings of $450 yearly. This equals over $690,000 in solar savings annually across 1,540 solar homes, which 900 are verified low-income.

This program portrays leadership to resolve barriers to LMI solar access while providing a product that has influence household-level energy burdens.

They’ve created a business model that works for Connecticut homeowners that could be replicated by other states that want to give renewable energy benefits to LMI customers and meaningful reductions to LMI energy burdens.

Connecticut’s Solar for All partnership was a participient of a 2018 “State Leadership in Clean Energy Award,” presented by the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA). If you’d like more information, click here.

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