Portal Updates

Portal Development Roadmap

The Portal Development Roadmap is designed to preview upcoming, planned development for the Illinois Shines portal. Updates on the following planned activities will be provided in weekly Program announcements, and detailed below in the Portal Updates Blog in conjunction with software releases.

 

Roadmap Update: March 24, 2026
QUARTER 1 2026 (January, February, March)

Subscriber Management
Development completed for the Subscriber Management feature, including improvements to usability based on feedback from AVs and Designees.

Batch Fee Reporting
AVs can now see batch fee calculations in real-time while generating a batch, providing application fee transparency. AVs can download a report with itemized application calculations and fees for selected batches.

Nested Designees
AVs and Designees can now view their Nested Designee relationships. This feature enables a future feature where Designees can manage their own Nested Designee relationships.

QUARTER 2 2026 (April, May, June)

Historical CS Subscriptions
Allow AVs and Designees to add inactive community solar subscriptions to the Portal so that full historical data can be used to calculate daily averages and complete annual reporting.

Address Validation
Use of address validation tool to standardize installation addresses during Part I submission, to identify expansions, co-locations, and duplicate applications before contracting.

2026-27 Program Year Setup and New Long-Term Plan Changes
Changes to the Portal to support the new 2026-27 Program Year and 2026 Long-Term Plan updates.

QUARTER 3 2026 (July, August, September)

2026 REC Contract Changes
Updates to REC Contract, Schedules, and Project Removal Notice templates to support the 2026 REC Contract.

Community Solar Subscriber Management Portal Feature

The Program Administrator continues development of the Community Solar Subscription Management Feature for the Program Portal, which is slated for a March 2026 launch. This new feature will replace the current manual workbook process in SharePoint and will allow for improved subscriber data quality and the centralization of access. The new feature will give Approved Vendors (“AVs”) and Designees the ability to view and manage subscriptions, view unsubscribed Disclosure Forms, and import and export subscription data. Additionally, AVs will have the ability to manage project permissions and assign Designees to view/manage community solar projects. Click on each of the following sections for details on the development timelines: 

The Program Administrator invited AVs and Designees, who participated in the 2025 AV/Designee Subscriber Management Working Group, to participate in a live demo and testing session, where AVs and Designees had the opportunity to provide feedback on the new feature.

The Program Administrator will review the feedback from the AV Testing Session of the core functionality and consider potential enhancements to the Portal feature before official launch.

Mid-February: Disclosure Form Transfer Process

The Illinois Shines Program Administrator has developed the Disclosure Form Transfer process, which allows Disclosure Forms to be transferred from one entity to another in circumstances where written requests are provided to the Program Administrator from all parties involved. This will provide flexibility to Approved Vendors (“AVs”) and Designees should they need to manage Disclosure Forms that were not generated directly by that specific AV or Designee.

Based on the permissions settings in the new Subscription Management Portal Feature, AVs or Designees who did not originally generate a Disclosure Form will not be able to subscribe that Disclosure Form to a Community Solar project. The Disclosure Form Transfer Process will support these circumstances where there is a mismatch between the entity who generated the Disclosure Form and entity who is managing the Disclosure Forms and subscriptions for the project. The Program Administrator has reached out to AVs where disclosure form transfers may be necessary, asking AVs to submit requests if necessary. The full process is outlined in the Subscriber Management Training Guide.

Mid-February: Data Import

To support the launch of the Community Solar Subscription Management Feature, the Program Administrator will import all current subscriber data into the Portal in late February/early March, including the most recent subscriber data from the December Semi-Annual Verifications and the December–February Part II Quarterly Period. Prior to final subscriber data import, the Program Administrator will perform a series of data validation checks on all subscriber records. Subscriber records with any data validation errors will not be imported into the Portal. The Program Administrator will identify records omitted from the final data import due to data validation errors and share those records with Approved Vendors (“AVs”). AVs will be responsible for correcting the subscriber data errors that prevented validation and importing the updated data into the Portal once the Community Solar Subscription Management Feature is live. AVs must ensure the subscriber data in the Portal is accurate and up to date. Any records that are not imported into the Portal will not be considered for subscriber verification purposes or Annual Report daily average calculations.

Please see Appendix A of the Subscriber Management Training Guide for a list of data validations.

The Program Administrator will reach out to AVs once the final subscriber data import has been completed and outline any outstanding action items and next steps.

Late-February: Final Subscriber Data Import

The Program Administrator will import current subscriber data into the Portal that passes all required data validation checks. Any subscription rows that do not pass required data validation checks will not be imported. The Program Administrator will communicate to AVs and Designees that have impacted records to explain the data issues and how the AV can resolve the issues by updating the subscriber data and importing the data after official feature launch.

Late-February: Subscriber Management Live Webinar

The Program will host a live webinar on February 26, 2026, from 12:00 – 1:15 p.m. CPT. The webinar will provide a live demo, recorded reference resource, and detail the feature’s development, benefits, and upcoming changes to subscriber data management processes. Please register with this link.

Feature goes live in Portal. SharePoint-based process is retired.

To support the transition and the full launch of the Feature, the Program Administrator will be requiring AVs to complete several action items prior to and after launch. Each action item is listed below with a short description of the request and expected timeline. The Program Administrator will reach out to all AVs in the coming weeks with any additional updates and requests to complete these outstanding action items. 

Reviewing and confirming Designees by project: The week of February 2, 2026, the Program Administrator reached out to AVs to confirm current Designees by project by February 11, 2026. Generally, Disclosure Forms and their associated subscriptions will only be able to be managed by the “owner” of the form, which will default to the AV and/or Designee named on the form when it was initially created. The Program Administrator will be able to transfer Disclosure Forms to a new “owner” and will identify records where the current Designee does not match the Designee on the Disclosure Forms. For these mismatched records, AVs will need to consider requesting a Disclosure Forms transfer to make records editable based on the confirmed Designee associations.

Reviewing and curing data validation errors post launch: The Program Administrator will import subscriber data, which must meet required data validations, into the Portal prior to launch. Data records that fail any data validations will not be imported by the Program Administrator. These data validation errors have been identified in subscriber workbooks for remediation. The Program Administrator will identify any remaining records with data validation errors which will be omitted from the final data import. AVs will need to cure data validation issues and import the omitted subscriptions into the Portal after March 2026, once the feature is fully functional. 

Setting up project delegation: After feature launch, AVs will be responsible for delegating Designees to manage Community Solar projects in the Portal. Delegating a Designee to manage a project will allow that Designee to view all subscription records for a project. However, personally identifiable information will be redacted from records where a Designee is not the “owner”. 

Retiring SharePoint-based process: AVs will need to review the accuracy of subscription records and delegate Designees to all Part II Verified projects in the Portal after March 2026, once the feature is fully functional.

Stakeholder Support

To support the launch of the new Community Solar Subscriber Management Feature, a variety of resources will be provided to ensure AVs and Designees have adequate support for a smooth transition to the new features. Those support and resources are detailed below: 

Live Webinar:

The Illinois Shines Program Administrator held a live webinar showcasing a walkthrough of the new Portal feature and its functionalities on February 26, 2026.The webinar Recording, presentation slides, pre-recorded demo video, and Q&A from the webinar are now available.

Subscriber Management Training Guide:

This Training Guide details the functionalities of the new feature, FAQs, and troubleshooting scenarios.

Office Hours:

The Illinois Shines Program hosts weekly Office Hours run by the Strategy team. This will be a resource for AVs and Designees. Members of the Contracts team will also be present to provide specific support for Subscriber Management. 

General Customer Support:

The Customer Support team will be readily available to provide support via phone and email.

The Illinois Shines Program Administrator looks forward to launching the new Community Solar Subscription Management Feature. Thank you for your continued collaboration and please reach out if you have questions or concerns.

Portal Updates Blog

The Program Administrator will use this space to provide ongoing portal updates on releases of features and functions (newly-available and planned); issue and bug reports, investigations, and resolutions; updates on data availability and reports; changes to portal materials/documents or appearance; new technical documentation and support; and more.

August 22, 2025

Added “Utility Generation ID” as optional field on Community Solar applications AVs will have a new, optional field to populate and view in Part 2, Section 2 of the Community Solar application. This “Utility Generation ID” is the “Facility ID” for ComEd, “Generation ID” for Ameren, and “Production Facility” for

August 15, 2025 – New Field on Part II of the Community Solar Application

New Field on Part II of the Community Solar Application On August 20, 2025, the Part II application for Community Solar projects will add an additional field to ensure accurate tracking of all project information. The new field, Utility Project ID (Facility ID/Generation ID), will be added to Section 2 of all Community Solar Part II Applications. While the new field is optional, the Program Administrator requests that AVs populate the

June 27, 2025

Enhancements: API Enhancement – Ability to Create Designee Disclosure Forms from AV’s API Integration  The API has been updated to allow AV Accounts to submit Disclosure Forms on behalf of Designees working with the given AV, so that Designees using the AV’s software can follow the same process the AV users and

June 20, 2025 

Enhancements: Market facing enhancement – Disclosure Form file name  Disclosure Form files will have DFID and Date/Time appended to the file name, preventing save/write conflicts upon upload.  Market facing enhancement – Block download of Disclosure Form PDFs  The Program blocked download of signed Disclosure Form PDFs on records identified as potentially impacted by the file naming/save-write

June 13, 2025

Updated Email Address for Portal API Support The Program Administrating is migrating support for the Portal’s API users to a new platform, necessitating an updated email address for users to access support. Effective immediately, users seeking assistance should contact the Program Administrator at [email protected], and discontinue using [email protected].  

May 16, 2025

Update DG Over 25kW Part 1 Documents Upload text (append “/ Proof of Interconnection Approval” to “Signed Interconnection Agreement”) Starting from the new 2025-2026 Program Year, Proof of Interconnection Approval can be submitted in lieu of Signed Interconnection Agreement for the Part 1 Documents Upload of DG projects over 25 kW. The