Why the program exists
Nearly half of Virginia households and businesses cannot put solar panels on their own roof, because they rent, live in a condo, or have a roof that will not work, according to Virginia Energy, the state government energy agency. A program called shared solar lets those customers buy into a solar farm that a separate company builds and owns instead.
This essentially provides a cost-effective solution for customers who want to access clean energy but can't locate solar on their own homes.
Delegate Rip Sullivan, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing Fairfax. Source 5.
How the subscription and the bill floor work
Each shared solar farm is capped at 5,000 kilowatts and must sit on a single piece of land, so a subscription buys into a large, professionally built project rather than a panel on a home roof. Dominion Energy Virginia does not build or own that farm. A subscriber buys a share of what the farm generates, and Dominion credits that share against the regular bill for that account. A customer cannot subscribe for more credit than their own average yearly bill would use, and a customer already on net metering cannot join shared solar at the same time.
Dominion is also allowed to charge every subscriber a minimum bill no matter how much credit they earn. Until November 2024, that minimum bill was an extra charge added on top of the regular bill. A rule that took effect February 14, 2025 turned it into a floor the bill cannot be credited below instead, and low income customers, earning no more than 80% of the median income where they live, are exempt from it entirely.
What a subscriber pays today
For a typical customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours a month, the current minimum bill is 83.59 dollars, according to the policy research group Institute for Local Self Reliance. That is up from about 55.10 dollars 2 years earlier, before regulators raised the floor.
How big the program has grown
The 2020 and 2024 figures come from a law firm summary of the regulatory record, source 2. The 2026 total comes from the program page published by Dominion Energy.
Show the numbers
| 2020 launch | 200 |
| 2024 law | 350 |
| 2026 total | 725 |
Regulators capped the shared solar program at 200 megawatts when it launched in December 2020. A law that took effect July 1, 2024 raised the cap to 350 megawatts once 90% of that first block was subscribed, and set aside 75 of the 150 new megawatts for projects serving mostly low income subscribers. The program page Dominion Energy publishes now lists a combined total near 725 megawatts, after a further expansion the company dates to 2026.
Where the new capacity goes, and who has signed up
Show the numbers
| Phase 1, capacity from 2020 | 200 |
| Phase 2, general capacity added in 2026 | 450 |
| Phase 2, reserved for low income customers | 75 |
Of the 525 megawatts added in that 2026 expansion, Dominion reserves 75 megawatts for projects serving mostly low income customers again. The other 450 megawatts serve the general program, on top of the 200 megawatts approved in 2020.
No source gives a subscriber count for the whole state. One developer allowed to sell shared solar in Virginia, Dimension Energy, already serves more than 10,000 households across 7 projects. One of those projects, in Suffolk, has about 800 subscribers in the Hampton Roads region.
That really unlocks access to every other Virginian who, before, unless they were willing to pay a premium, was shut out.
Brandon Smithwood, vice president of policy at Dimension Energy, a shared solar developer. Source 5.