In March 2021, New Mexico passed SB84, the Community Solar Act. The Act outlines the requirements for qualifications, ownership, administration, and rulemaking around community solar projects. Under this program, community solar projects will have a nameplate rating of less than 5 MW, have at least 10 subscribers, any one of whom cannot subscribe to over 40% of the generating capacity of the facility or to more than 120% of their average annual electricity consumption, make at least 40% of the total generating capacity available in subscriptions of 25 kW or less, and be located in the service territory of a qualifying utility and be interconnected to that utility’s distribution system.
The facility will be owned or operated by a subscriber organization, and subscriptions to the facility will be transferable and portable within the qualified utility service territory. Qualifying utilities will acquire the entire output of the community solar facility and provide bill credits to subscribers on a monthly basis for no less than 25 years from the date the facility is first interconnected. Bill credits can be carried over to the next monthly bill if they exceed the subscriber’s current bill. If the community solar facility is not fully subscribed in any given month, the unsubscribed energy may be rolled forward on the facility’s account for up to one year and allocated to subscribers at any time during that period. The Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) associated with the facility may be sold or transferred by the owner of the facility to the qualifying utility. The Public Regulation Commission must adopt rules to establish this program no later than November 1, 2021, and these rules must create a 100 MW cap on community solar projects proportionally allocated to qualifying utilities until January 1, 2024 and excluding native community solar projects and rural electric distribution cooperatives. The Commission will then establish a new cap after January 1, 2024 and require 30% of the program annually to be reserved for low-income customers and low-income service organizations. It must also establish a process to select projects and allocate the statewide cap, require qualifying utilities to file any tariffs, agreements, or forms necessary to implement the program, and establish uniform non-discriminatory standards and fees for the interconnection of community solar projects, provide protections for customers including disclosure forms in both English and Spanish and any native or indigenous languages, when appropriate, provide a community solar bill credit rate mechanisms, reasonably allow for project financing, provide requirements for siting and co-location of facilities, and provide a report on the status of community solar by no later than November 1, 2024. Rural electric distribution cooperatives may opt-into the community solar program.