By Nate Reagle, Clean Energy Program Advocate, Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter
Why all the talk about community solar? Keep reading and find out.
Last session, there was a community solar bill that made it through the House and into the Senate. This was quite a milestone. This year, HB 504 has been introduced to cover community solar and the use of renewable natural gas from anaerobic digesters. The digesters are typically thought of as an agricultural application of community energy. This article focuses on the community solar aspect.
Community solar is a system that greatly enables the expansion of solar power production by allowing solar production at a separate location than the customers subscribing to the service. This flexibility leads to great benefits.
Community solar eliminates many barriers that low- to moderate-income residents encounter when attempting to participate in solar programs. Being able to purchase a subscription to a community solar program bypasses the obstacles of roof condition, ownership versus renting status, roof orientation, shading, and other site conditions, resulting in equitable access to the benefits of solar. Only 22-27% of residential household roofs are suitable for solar PV installation. Community solar is the only practical option available to access the manufactured housing and multifamily housing sectors with renewable energy.
Efficiency at the project scale also increases with community solar as an option. The larger scale of community solar projects compared to smaller residential rooftop solar contributes to increased efficiency, as well as the ability to site community solar projects in ideal locations rather than making a less than ideal rooftop work. Community solar also contributes to overall grid resilience and reduces the over-reliance on fossil fuel energy production by providing a more diverse energy portfolio. Combining energy storage with community solar improves the resilience even more.
Because of all the benefits discussed above, community solar has the potential to dramatically accelerate the adoption of solar in Pennsylvania.
Overall, HB 504 (Community Energy) gives reason for some optimism. With the previous community solar bill making it as far as it did, I think it is reasonable to expect this bill to do just as well and even better. Since HB 504 passed the House, we now have to focus on the Senate.
This blog was included as part of the June 2025 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!