Solarize Germantown
The Germantown Climate Smart Task Force, in partnership with the Columbia County Climate Smart Committee, has launched a Solar Campaign to allow households to sign up for a share in local solar farms, thus contributing to the decarbonization of New York State’s power grid.
After vetting several providers, the County Committee has chosen to work with Nexamp & Neighborhood Sun (formerly Astral). Both companies provide the same service, with slight differences in their billing procedures.
What is Community Solar?
Community Solar does not require you to install solar panels on your roof. Instead, you receive your energy by virtual net metering from a solar farm in our area. Net metering credits are what you receive from your utility when you generate solar energy on your roof. Your electric meter spins forward for the electricity you consume but also spins backward for the electricity your solar panels create, generating credits that appear on your electricity bill.
Virtual net metering credits are the same as net metering credits except for the electricity you earn credits for is generated at a solar farm, not at your house. Providers generally have an idea of how much power their farms will produce in any given year. You may receive more credits in the summer and less in the winter.
Utility customers subscribe to local solar farms, the providers assign you the right number of panels to match your annual electricity use, and the solar farm feeds clean power into your community's electricity grid, thus earning you credits for the power generated. Those credits show up on subscribers’ utility bills saving them as much as 10% on their annual electricity costs.
Nexamp & Neighborhood Sun - What’s the Difference?
This last point is important—you will still be receiving energy from National Grid, so if you sign up for Community Solar, you will continue to get billed by National Grid, but with solar credits applied to your monthly bill. The two providers have different billing procedures.
Nexamp will bill you for the solar credits, which will then be applied to your National Grid bill, which you’ll also receive. Nexamp prefers this method since they’ve found that National Grid always kept accurate records of how many solar credits customers received. Neighborhood Sun prefers to do consolidated billing, so you will only receive one bill from them. Customers will decide which company they prefer to work with. A sign-up portal is available on the County website, where customers can read about both providers and choose the one they want.
Why Sign Up?
Both providers will offer $100 rebates to the first 100 customers. There is no fee to sign or cancel. Upon sign up, it generally takes 1-2 months for the transition to appear. The 10% discount is good for 25 years.
As part of the campaign, Sustainable Germantown will receive points with a NYSERDA program called Clean Energy Communities if we sign up 10 customers, so if you choose to go with Community Solar, make sure you select “Columbia County Solarize.” Also please let our local Climate Smart Committee know directly by emailing us at climatesmartgermantown@gmail.com. If you have any questions, please also direct them here, and we’ll try to get back to you in a timely fashion.
Thank you in advance for your interest and support of the campaign.