Maryland community solar grants low income households a 25% discount on their electricity bill

Community solar in Maryland sends low income households a discount

Community solar lets a Maryland household cut its electricity bill by subscribing to a solar project built somewhere else, which matters most to low income renters and homeowners who cannot put panels on their own roof, exactly the people this grant targets. Governor Wes Moore announced 43 million dollars in new state grants for 69 community solar projects on June 9, 2026, through the Fiscal Year 2026 Community Solar LMI PPA Grant Program, run by the Maryland Energy Administration. LMI stands for low and moderate income, the households this specific round of funding was built for. Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, framed the money as cutting bills as well as adding clean power.

When we invest in community solar, we are not only delivering clean energy, but cutting utility costs for the communities that need it the most.

Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, quoted in source 1, the announcement of the new grant round. Source 1.

How low income households qualify and apply for the Maryland discount

To win this specific grant, a developer had to promise that at least 15% of a project output would go to low income households, at a guaranteed minimum 12% savings on their bill. Maryland says actual savings often run higher than 20%, though it names no exact ceiling. These awards are set to give more than 4,800 low income households at least a 25% discount on their electricity bill, with no equipment to buy or install. Another 1,000 households get help through an existing low income energy assistance programme the state already runs, the Electric Universal Service Program, layered on top of this grant. Solar Landscape won 21 rooftop projects across 2 utility territories, Lightstar won 12 agrivoltaic projects, meaning solar built over active farmland, and Pippin Farms won 2 projects on capped landfills.

This grant sits on top of a broader Maryland law

Every Maryland community solar project, whether or not it won one of the new grants this year, already has to follow a wider rule. House Bill 908, passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2023, made community solar a permanent programme called the Community Solar Energy Generating Systems Program, with its own regulations published February 4, 2025. That law requires 40% of any project output to serve low and moderate income subscribers, and caps what those subscribers can be charged at 90% of the value of their bill credit, guaranteeing at least 10% savings, a wider floor that already covers every project, on top of which this specific grant adds its narrower 15% share. The detail that only shows up on the regulator own page, not in the announcement, is that these awards sit on top of a programme that only recently stopped being a pilot. Maryland ran a capped, temporary version of community solar from 2015 until it expired December 31, 2024, limited statewide to about 580 megawatts, before House Bill 908 lifted that cap and replaced it with the state own much larger 3,000 megawatt net metering ceiling. The pilot itself only reached 204 of the 580 megawatts it was allowed, across every project approved through June 30, 2024.

The choice ahead for a household

A Maryland household that qualifies gets a real number now, at least 25% off an electricity bill, for signing up to a project it will never see built.