On-site solar PV for C&I customers can lower operating costs and stabilize part of your power price. That only holds when your electricity rate, your state's export rules, your daytime load, and your ownership structure line up.
This is Energy Decision #55 in the complete C&I energy management series by Daniel Burke. It's part of his mission to create the world's largest, free, high-trust energy resource library for commercial and industrial consumers.
In this episode, Daniel Burke covers:
- Behind-the-meter solar: self-consumption vs. exported energy, and how exports are credited depending on your state
- Energy billed per kilowatt-hour vs. demand billed per kilowatt, and which one solar offsets
- Solar plus storage for peak shaving, demand charge management, and backup power
- Why your marginal energy charge sets your commercial solar payback period, and why your average bill rate overstates it
- The split incentive problem between building owners and tenants
- Export rule changes: California's net billing tariff and Indiana's phase-out of net metering
- Direct ownership vs. third-party ownership: cash, loans, solar leases, and the solar PPA
- The federal tax credit and its current deadlines, depreciation, SRECs, and elective pay for schools and municipalities
Who this is for: plant managers, facility managers, and finance leaders at manufacturing plants, school districts, municipalities, breweries, farms, and retail operations who have a solar proposal in front of them and need to know whether the payback holds up.
If you're asking whether solar makes sense for your manufacturing plant, or how a solar PPA compares with a cash purchase, this episode is built for you.
Read the full breakdown on On-site Solar PV for C&I Customers at tac-nrg.com
If you're an Indiana C&I operator actively evaluating this decision, get your free Energy Decision Blueprint at tac-nrg.com/blueprint.
Visit tac-nrg.com to access the entire Energy Answers resource library and the Energy Decision Blueprint for qualified Indiana C&I operators.