D.C. looks to lead the way in community solar

The largest community rooftop solar project in the city—at 6.1 MW—was recently completed in Washington D.C., illustrating that the U.S. capital is looking to be a leader in community solar power.

By Tony Kryzanowski

Almost 1,000 low to moderate income households in Washington, D.C. will soon enjoy anywhere from a 10 to 20 percent reduction in their power bills resulting from the completion of the largest community rooftop solar project in the District of Columbia.

Community solar, where the developer takes the construction risk and then signs up subscribers for the renewable power they generate often at discounted rates, opens the door for households to participate in the renewable power market in a way that they likely could not afford to do on their own.

In addition to providing substantial power cost savings to low and middle income subscribers, the D.C. project is expected to avoid 4,279 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, or the equivalent of removing 1,300 cars off the road.

Owned by Aligned Climate Capital, they recently flipped the switch on this 6.1 megawatt (MW) fixed-tilt rooftop solar array which was constructed for about $20 million. Power generated from the project is wheeled through the local Potomac Electric Power Company (Pepco) power distribution network, with the owner compensated on a virtual net metering basis.

The solar array is distributed across what were empty roofs of several buildings owned by a national real estate company. This was the first rooftop solar project approved by the company and they are now earning lease payment income for hosting the array over the 20-year lifespan of the project. Given the success of this project, the company is now evaluating the potential for considerably more rooftop solar development right across its entire national portfolio.

So, suffice to say that this community solar project is a classic win-win for all parties involved.

Boulder, Colorado-based Black Bear Energy performed the background work to build the business case for the viability and profitability of this project for the real estate company.

“The D.C. government typically likes to position their program as benefitting these types of households that are historically left out of the energy transition,” says Jen Lessick, Senior Director of Client Operations at Black Bear Energy. “A lot of them are renters—so they can’t put solar on their own rooftops—but through this program, they are able to benefit from reduced electricity bills and they are supporting clean electricity on their local grid.”

Lessick adds that Washington, D.C. is “very lucrative” for community rooftop solar developers and likely the most lucrative in the entire U.S. A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) has been set for Pepco by the city government, thus creating demand for renewable power generation and a strong willingness to purchase the renewable energy credits created by developers.

The D.C. government has set a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) for Pepco to receive 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2032.

“Anywhere in D.C. that has a flat, new roof with enough space, someone is going to be angling to put a community rooftop solar project up there,” Lessick says. “So it is fairly common and a fairly straightforward city program. It has been around for a number of years.”

It’s estimated that 965 single family homes will benefit from power supplied by this 6.1 MW project initiated by Black Bear Energy, with the potential for subscribers to save about $7.5 million in electricity costs over the next 20 years.

Black Bear Energy works entirely in the rooftop solar development space. They work exclusively with real estate owners, primarily using their building roofs to host solar arrays.

“We see 10 percent of the commercial and industrial solar market in the U.S. come through our platform,” says Lessick. “So we really are experts on rooftop community solar.”

Over the past decade, they have expedited the installation of hundreds of rooftop community solar projects throughout the U.S.

They do a considerable amount of the necessary advanced legwork. Factors that they will consider as part of their investigations are roofs with the engineered strength needed to support a solar array and with not a lot of other devices such as air conditioning units and other equipment impeding development. They will also consider local, state and federal jurisdictional support programs as well as grid capacity and plug-in opportunities with local utilities for generation of virtual net metering income for the owner.

	Black Bear Energy performed the background work to build the business case for the viability and profitability of the Washington, D.C. community solar project for the real estate company that owns the buildings where the solar project is located.

Over its decade of experience working in the community rooftop solar space, Black Bear Energy has found that development is heavily driven by favorable state policies.

“It’s between Black Bear Energy and our client to determine where the best fit is for solar and then we bring that to market, running a procurement process for a developer to sign on to build a project,” Lessick says.

Speaking specifically about the D.C. project, she says, “for an urban rooftop community solar project, it’s quite large. Typically, we will see these types of projects range somewhere between 1 megawatt and 3 megawatts. The sweet spot is between 1 to 3 megawatts, and maybe 5 megawatts depending on the rooftop space.”

The company already had significant experience with community rooftop solar projects in both Washington, D.C. and in neighboring Maryland, but nothing close to this magnitude of this recent D.C.
project.

Once Black Bear Energy’s real estate client gave the go-ahead, they held a development competition and a Virginia-based developer won the contract. Once completed, it was purchased by Aligned Climate Capital who now owns and operates the rooftop array.

The physical location of this rooftop community solar project is on industrial buildings in northwest D.C., consisting of 700,000 square feet of rooftop space. The installation was attractive in that the buildings where the rooftop array was situated were in very close proximity to each other, with newer roofs, and largely free of many encumbrances. It takes up the rooftop space of up to 10 buildings. The entire array consists of 12,614 bi-facial solar modules.

The rooftop community solar project is on industrial buildings in northwest D.C., consisting of 700,000 square feet of rooftop space. The project was attractive in that the buildings where the rooftop array was situated were in very close proximity to each other, with newer roofs, and the roofs were largely free of many encumbrances.

The racking system supplier was Quebec City-based, Opsun Systems. As the initial developer of the project, the developer hired construction contractor, Solar Gaines, to build the project. They are headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.

Inception for the project was in 2021. Construction actually began in March 2024, and was completed in December 2024, with power production expected to begin in summer 2025. The time between inception to construction takes into account the significant timelines it often takes for delivery of components and is something that Lessick says that the industry now expects when planning projects.

This D.C. project was somewhat of a test case for the real estate company which owns industrial real estate in six coastal U.S. markets, those being New York/Northern New Jersey, Los Angeles, Miami, the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

“This is a great example of a client who just completed their first project and has a ton in the pipeline behind it, waiting to start construction,” says Lessick.

She adds that the process that resulted in the D.C. project can very easily be replicated where someone will be renting out their rooftop to create new income for themselves, while working with a company like Black Bear Energy who will oversee the construction process.

As a concept, Lessick says that incentivizing construction of community rooftop solar production is one of the best ways to continue the transition toward the generation of renewable power to displace fossil fuel-based power production.

“It checks so many boxes for sustainability and for value creation,” she says. “Community solar is really, in my view, the energy transition silver bullet that doesn’t leave anyone behind.”

Particularly in the case of rooftop solar, the building owner receives new, stable income over a long time horizon and the grid owner benefits in that they can provide additional electricity from a new local source of power generation, particularly in areas where the load demand is growing and reaching its maximum from conventional sources. Subscribers also receive power at a significant discount.

A good example of growing power demand are the number of electric vehicles which are now regularly plugging into the grid, especially in highly populated urban centres, and this power demand is expected to grow significantly over the next decade.

Lessick adds that the smartest utilities have either already rolled out a community solar program or are looking to roll one out and there are also a number of states introducing legislation to try to incentivize community solar programs. For example, in this year alone, seven states have already prepared legislation to do so.

Q3 2025