State solar policy on the frontlines

From pv magazine RE+ Special Edition

T.R. Ludwig, CEO of Brooklyn SolarWorks, didn’t see the second of a one-two punch coming. As the industry was losing federal support, the government of New York announced it would reallocate funds after overachieving its distributed-generation goal.

“A lot of us were rather focused on the federal stuff, because we knew that that was going to start to heat up and get adversarial,” said Ludwig, a board member of New York Solar Energy Industries Association. “So, nobody was terribly focused on what was happening at the state level.”

State policy is integral to solar. Its incentives can determine whether solar prospers or falters in the state. But more importantly, its power can make or break whether solar developments are even allowed in the state to begin with.

Every two years, every state’s bill session aligns during the spring, and this year, energy bills dominated many lawmakers’ discussions. The outcome was a mixed bag, with bills bringing solar sunrises and sunsets across the country.

Nobody was terribly focused on what was happening
at the state level.𑂾 T.R. Ludwig, Brooklyn SolarWorks

State policy has always been a front line for energy in the United States. With the loss of federal incentives this has never been truer, according to Jeff Cramer, president and CEO of the Coalition for Community Solar Access.

Community solar

Roughly half of the United States does not have policies to enable community solar. Several states introduced bills this year to implement community solar, but every bill in a state without year-long sessions failed.

In Montana, Republican-backed community solar legislation made it as far as the governor’s desk – having previously failed to make it to a first vote in either chamber – but was ultimately vetoed.

Meanwhile, Minnesota nearly lost its newly revamped community solar program after three senators – two Democrats and one Republican – introduced legislation to repeal it. David Moberg, policy and regulatory affairs associate, Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, described it as “probably the most frustrating” bill of the session.

Supporters were concerned that an early sunset for the community solar program could signal problems in other states, too. Minnesota’s challenges mirror those seen elsewhere: bipartisan and broad public support for solar, but with opposition from utilities. However, Minnesota is so far the only state in 2025 whose lawmakers or governor did not side with utilities over community solar. The state’s successes and challenges can serve as a template for campaigners in other states seeking to overcome opposition from utilities.

Why not every state has community solar

There are 19 states with deregulated energy markets and 15 (79%) have succeeded in adopting community solar legislation – lawmakers are inching close in the remaining four. In contrast, less than 20% of states with regulated energy markets have passed community solar legislation.

Investor-owned utilities are usually the sole opponents to testify against community solar bills. Ohio lawmakers spent nearly a year holding hearings for a community solar bill, with more than 70 testimonies from residents and stakeholders representing an array of industries in support of the bill, while the utilities were among the few to testify in opposition.

In deregulated energy markets where utilities are forbidden from owning generation, objections from utilities become quieter, if they raise any at all.

“For every megawatt that a third-party community solar developer develops, that’s a megawatt of regulated rate of return that they cannot develop,” said Jeff Cramer, president and CEO of the Coalition for Community Solar Access. “They like to spin everybody up into knots and tell narratives of cost shift and how it’s going to be unreliable for the grid and this and that. They scare everybody, but ultimately, it’s about their own self-interest.”

The utility business model is to make more regulated rate of returns on more dollars, Cramer argued. “I don’t blame them for that, but it is a big problem in the sense of trying to bring new, innovative, competitive products into these vertically integrated states,” he said.

Microgrids

Virginia has the largest data-center market in the world, according to the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The state does not produce enough energy to meet demand, importing 61% of its electricity between 2018 and 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Virginia’s House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation in April 2025 to triple the state’s energy storage capacity. However, Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the new law, along with most other clean energy bills, such as a bill to increase rooftop solar and other forms of distributed power.

West Virginia has since passed legislation designed to lure data centers across the border. It has eased restrictions on microgrid development and created a certified microgrid program. The new law makes it easier for companies, especially data centers, to build independent microgrids. It creates special “microgrid districts” that are exempt from many local zoning regulations and allows generated power to be used on-site or sold wholesale.

Oregon has also passed microgrid legislation that enables entities beyond utilities to own and operate microgrids.

Net metering

In California and Maine, net metering programs have been under fire, with two high-profile bills proving controversial. California’s net metering was set to affect homeowners with rooftop solar installations, while Maine’s targeted ratepayers who have installations or who subscribe to community solar projects.

California’s bill would have switched the existing net-metering agreements into the state’s new net-metering structure, which pays about 80% less for the electricity sent to the grid. After lawmakers changed the legislation to only mandate the switch when a home is sold, the bill was eventually amended to remove the net-metering changes entirely.

In Maine, lawmakers have made community solar and other front-of-the-meter projects ineligible for the current net-metering structure. State law tasks the Governor’s Energy Office with developing a successor program and also imposes a monthly fee that community solar project owners must pay to utilities.

Automated permitting

New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Hawaii, New Jersey, Colorado, Florida, and Texas all worked to pass bills to speed up permitting decisions for residential solar installations. Although the bills shared the same objective – to push sluggish municipalities into a streamlined process – every bill that required the adoption of automated permitting software failed. New Jersey’s passage of a smart permitting bill was the only exception.

Texas and Florida succeeded by taking a different approach that works within their state’s existing framework. It allows contractors to conduct inspections, including the use of automated permitting software, if a city or municipality fails to make a decision on a permitting application after a prescribed number of days.

Solar defense Solar and energy storage are big in Texas, but a trio of bills threatened progress. Texas Senate Bill 819 would have placed additional fees, permitting restrictions, setback requirements, and regulatory mandates exclusively on utility-scale solar and wind projects.

Another bill required at least half of all new generation to come from “dispatchable generation other than energy storage.” The third bill aimed to retroactively mandate existing renewable energy installations to install a backup energy source. All three bills died after stalling in the legislature.

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