Get email alerts on the Community Solar topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee considers streamlined CPCN for 2'5 MW community solar projects to speed development
Summary
Senate Bill 983 would create a new, expedited CPCN pathway for 2'5 MW community solar projects, requiring the Power Plant Research Program to develop standard siting and design criteria the PSC would use for review.
Senator Christopher Brooks told the Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee that Senate Bill 983 establishes a new DG-CPCN process for community solar projects sized between 2 megawatts and 5 megawatts, a category currently handled through a CPCN process intended for much larger power plants.
Senator Brooks said Maryland made community solar permanent in recent years and anticipates a surge of CPCN filings: he cited an internal Power Plant Research Program (PPRP) expectation of nearly 60 CPCN applications in the coming months after seeing seven two years prior. The bill would direct PPRP to develop standard siting and design requirements (including environmental protection, setbacks, stormwater management, screening and landscaping) and submit those to the Public Service Commission (PSC). Projects that meet the standardized requirements would get an expedited DG-CPCN review at the PSC.
Brooks said the process is intended to reduce agency workload and provide greater predictability for developers and counties. He said projects would be built primarily on rooftops, brownfields, industrial sites and parking lots but acknowledged that ground-mounted community solar will remain necessary and thus should be covered by a tailored CPCN path.
The sponsor said the bill is intended to work alongside other siting legislation, including the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, giving developers a choice between traditional CPCN review and the DG-CPCN with more stringent siting standards in exchange for a faster review. Brooks said stakeholders including the Maryland Association of Counties, Coalition for Community Solar Access, Chesapeake Solar and Storage Association, and others have expressed support.
No formal vote was taken during the hearing. Committee members did not pose substantive objections at the time of testimony; PSC staff and industry witnesses have previously urged clearer, predictable siting standards for distribution-scale solar.
AI generated
The text on this page is AI generated. Summaries, highlights, analysis, and video transcripts are all produced from the original source material.
AI can make mistakes, so if you spot one, and we will fix it for everyone.
Note: the source content is unaltered by us. Any content source we link to, be it a video, an audio recording, or a document, is presented exactly as its publisher released it. That publisher is usually a government body, sometimes an individual official or another organisation.
