When ComEd bungled the launch of a new computer billing system in February, it left millions of customers unable to see their balances or pay online for more than a week before it was ostensibly resolved.
But for thousands of ComEd customers participating in the state’s community solar program, the billing debacle continues.
For nearly four months, subscribers to community solar farms dotting the landscape across northern Illinois have been unable to get credit for the power generated to offset their regular ComEd bills. Meanwhile, the companies that operate the solar installations are not getting paid, essentially shutting down one of the state’s signature clean energy programs.
“Our program serves as a model for how community solar could work in other states,” said Sarah Moskowitz, executive director of Citizens Utility Board. “It’s very disappointing to see one of our utilities single-handedly halt the program for several months.”
Created nearly a decade ago and boosted by the state’s 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, the Illinois community solar program allows customers who might not be able to install their own rooftop panels to subscribe to a shared installation connected to the electric grid. The customer pays the solar provider, and receives credits for their share of the power generated on their monthly bills.
The solar company bills the subscriber at a discount to standard electric delivery rates to provide an incentive for clean energy generation in the state.
But the ComEd billing snafu in February short-circuited the process, with customers not getting credits and solar providers unable to charge subscribers.
“We are aware of this issue and are working to correct it as soon as it is possible; affected customers have been informed that they should begin to receive catch-up credits in their July bills,” ComEd spokesperson Shannon Breymaier said in an email Friday.
ComEd, which serves 4 million customers in northern Illinois, has 25,000 community solar subscribers at 96 installations in its territory, Breymaier said. Roughly a third of ComEd’s community solar customers haven’t received any credits since February, the utility said.
Community solar providers are also feeling the pain.
Founded in 2007, Boston-based Nexamp develops and operates community solar projects in 10 states, including about two dozen in Illinois. In January, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Nexamp announced the company’s Loop office on North Wacker Drive would serve as a second national headquarters, bringing 50 new jobs as it pursues more than $2 billion in planned investments in Illinois.
Pritzker was at the Nexamp office for the Jan. 22 announcement.
One month later, ComEd’s computer issues put Nexamp’s business model on hold, preventing the company from billing subscribers at 15 operating community solar farms from Will County to Rockford. Lacking data from ComEd, the company has also been unable to sign up any new customers in northern Illinois since February, according to Nick Bihun, director of utility relationships at Nexamp.
“Since this fiasco started, we brought three new projects online,” Bihun said. “We wanted to bring on hundreds of more customers. We essentially haven’t been able to.”
A Pritzker spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Nexamp has about 3,300 current subscribers in ComEd territory, Bihun said. That represents hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of solar energy generated in the last four months, without receiving any payment from subscribers.
Many community solar subscribers, meanwhile, have not received any credit for four months on their ComEd bills.
“In addition to taking significant steps to rectify the situation, we have maintained regular communication with community solar subscribers providing updates on the delays and the expected timeline for resolution,” ComEd’s Breymaier said in her email.
If ComEd does in fact rectify the billing issues in July, Nexamp will have more than four months of bills to send in one lump sum to its subscribers, who will then get credit from the utility.
While customers signed up for community solar to save money and promote clean energy, they didn’t sign up for such billing headaches, Bihun said. He fears that some may drop off the service without paying the bill, leaving the company with potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollectible revenue.
“We can’t turn their electricity off,” Bihun said. “We are likely not going to be able to collect a fair amount of the revenue for the energy generated, and the credits applied.”
While the current billing issues affect a relatively small percentage of ComEd customers, all of them may be footing the bill for fixing the problem.
In December, the Illinois Commerce Commission rejected ComEd’s four-year grid improvement plan and slashed its proposed $1.47 billion rate increase, giving the utility three months to come back with a revised plan.
ComEd did so in March, with a $1.1 billion proposed rate increase that included a new line item of $29.5 million for IT costs related to the ill-fated computer system switchover in February. If approved, the total rate increase would add $2.99 per month to the average residential bill, the utility said.
Citizens Utility Board, a 40-year-old nonprofit watchdog group that identified the $29.5 million increase for IT expenses in the revised rate increase proposal, is demanding that ComEd fix the billing issues once and for all, without charging its customers for its own mistakes.
“That ComEd was able to single-handedly mess this whole program up and affect several thousand of their customers and the business models of several of the solar providers serving the state is pretty troubling,” Moskowitz said. “Trying to charge their customers to fix this debacle is all the more galling.”