ComEd Opens Gar Creek Community Solar Project in Illinois

ComEd has launched a Kankakee county community solar project. This will provide qualified ComEd customers across northern Illinois with access to solar energy. Customers can also save up to $1,000 on their electricity bills each year for a three year subscription. The Gar Creek solar farm will be available to 600 customers. The project is owned by Fosler Solar, a Babcock & Wilcox company in Freeport, Ill., and was developed by Trajectory Energy Partners of Illinois.

“At ComEd, we are committed to making the transition to clean energy as inclusive as possible, and the Gar Creek project will help us achieve that goal,” says Scott Vogt, vice president of energy acquisition at ComEd. “Our partners at Fosler Solar and Trajectory Energy share our vision, and we are excited to work with them to provide qualified customers anywhere in our region with access to solar energy regardless of their income level.”

The program is enabled by Illinois Solar for All, which helps make solar installations more affordable through state incentives, and through ComEd’s partnerships with community solar developers. Give-A-Ray is the first program of its type in Illinois. It was launched last year with a community-based solar project that serves qualified customers within the Rockford area.

“The Gar Creek community solar project provides a unique opportunity for qualified customers to access clean, solar energy and realize meaningful savings on their energy bill,” states Nathaniel Dick, director of energy at Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc., which supports enrollment in the project. “ComEd’s Give-A-Ray community solar program helps reduce the energy burden at our sites for low-to-moderate income families.”

ComEd hopes to have more 80 community solar projects connected to its grid this year. This will allow residential customers to take advantage of the benefits of solar power without the need to install solar panel on their homes. Last year ComEd also received – for the third year in a row – more than 10,000 applications from residential, commercial and industrial customers to connect distributed energy resources like solar energy to the ComEd system.