Energy / net metering
Rhode Island revises net-metering rules for portable solar
The bill defines a portable solar generation device as a moveable 1,200-watt panel that plugs into a standard outlet and meets electrical safety standards. It also says credits cannot exceed a customer’s actual use.
Rhode Island is updating its solar credit rules to cover moveable solar devices and sharpen the rules for community projects. The measure keeps the existing guardrails on who can receive credits and how large those credits can be.
- Portable solar would be written into Rhode Island’s net-metering law.
- Shared solar projects would need eligible recipient accounts, including some tied to low- or moderate-income housing.
- One account could get no more than half the credits from a project.
- Credit transfers would still be limited by account usage.
- Rhode Island lawmakers are rewriting the state’s net-metering rules so portable solar generation devices can fit inside them
Rhode Island lawmakers are rewriting the state’s net-metering rules so portable solar generation devices can fit inside them. Net-metering is the system that lets customers earn electricity credits for power they send back to the grid, and this bill would bring a new kind of small-scale solar setup into that framework.
For households and community projects, that matters because the value of solar often depends less on the panels themselves than on whether the law knows how to count them.
Shared solar gets a clearer lane
The proposal also reshapes the rules for community remote net-metering, the setup that lets one solar facility spread credits across multiple accounts. Under the revised definition, those systems would need to allocate credits to at least one account tied to low- or moderate-income housing eligible credit recipients, or to three eligible credit-recipient customer accounts.
That gives shared projects a more explicit path into the program, especially when they are built for people who may not be able to put panels on their own roof but can still benefit from the electricity credits.
The caps do not go away
The bill keeps the guardrails around the credits. No more than 50% of the credits produced by a system could go to one eligible credit recipient, and at least 50% would have to go to the remaining eligible recipients within the per-recipient cap.
The credits also could not exceed the usage of the eligible accounts, with projected annual consumption allowed until a full three-year average becomes available. Available key vote records show the bill advanced without recorded no votes.