Illinois community solar net metering only applies if your utility serves more than 200,000 customers

Illinois community solar net metering depends on which utility serves you

Illinois community solar net metering, the bill credit a subscriber gets for buying a share of a solar project built elsewhere, is not the same everywhere in the state. Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois, the 2 largest utilities in Illinois, must keep crediting new community solar subscribers through net metering. MidAmerican Energy, a smaller Illinois utility, does not have to, for any community solar project that began operating after September 15, 2021. Which of those 3 utilities serves an address decides what a community solar subscription is worth.

The 2021 law split Illinois utilities into 2 tiers

Before September 2021, Illinois law required all 3 investor owned utilities, Commonwealth Edison, Ameren Illinois and MidAmerican Energy, to credit community solar subscribers through net metering, under tariffs the Illinois Commerce Commission approved for all 3 on September 27, 2017. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, passed in 2021, rewrote the community solar net metering section of the Public Utilities Act. The rewritten law requires net metering only from a utility that served more than 200,000 customers as of January 1, 2021, and only for a community solar project that began operating after September 15, 2021. Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois both serve more than 200,000 Illinois customers and must keep offering it. MidAmerican Energy serves fewer and does not have to, for any project built after that date.

MidAmerican dropped net metering for newer projects in January 2022

MidAmerican Energy filed a petition on December 14, 2021 to revise its Rate NMS tariff, the rate schedule covering net metering credits for community solar subscribers. The Illinois Commerce Commission granted that request on January 5, 2022. The Illinois Power Agency own account of the law states plainly that MidAmerican is no longer required to offer community solar subscription net metering for community renewable generation projects built after September 15, 2021. No source read for this article describes what credit a MidAmerican subscriber gets instead.

Community solar capacity is not running out

A separate worry, that Illinois Shines, the state program that funds community solar, is running out of room for new subscribers, does not hold up. The program own live capacity dashboard lists 4 separate community solar totals for the 2026 to 27 program year, and adding them together gives 409.23 megawatts available right now, a total this article calculated from the dashboard own figures. That is well under half of the 1,000 megawatts allotted to the entire 2026 to 27 program year across every category.

The program reopened in November 2025 with 873 additional megawatts, because the federal solar tax credit was phasing down and the state wanted to keep new projects moving, not because the old allocation had already run out.

Illinois own newest clean energy law, the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, takes effect June 1, 2026 and changes several other parts of the community solar program. It does not mention net metering anywhere. The split between utilities that must offer it and the one that does not remains exactly as it was set in 2021 and 2022.