The Traditional Community Solar category now allows for community solar projects up to and including 10 MW in size (increased from 2 MW). Capacity for the Traditional Community Solar category for the first two years after the effective date of Public Act 102-0662 were allocated to projects already on ordinal waitlists as of Public Act 102-0662’s enactment, as outlined below. Traditional Community Solar projects must have subscriptions of 25 kW or less constitute at least 50% of the facility’s nameplate capacity. The Traditional Community Solar category will generally comprise at least 30% of the Illinois Shines capacity. Traditional Community Solar projects will now also feature 20-year REC delivery contracts that pay for RECs over time as they are delivered, rather than the front-loaded payment schedule previously used for community solar.

Looking to subscribe? Find a Community Solar Project with this downloadable list.

For assistance in this project category, contact the Community Solar Sector Strategist, Jess Blue, at [email protected] or the Program Administrator team at [email protected].

A field of solar arrays during sunset.

Community Solar Project Timelines

There are a few important processes and steps that are helpful to understand regarding Community Solar project applications:

*With limited TCS capacity, a scoring mechanism is used when the annual block of capacity is exceeded on the first day (“Day One” applications) of the Program Year. TCS projects submitted after Day One are reviewed and scored in order on a rolling basis, and if eligible, added to waitlist.

**See applicable Public Schools application deadlines in the Program Guidebook.

Category-Specific Resources

  1. Download the “Find a Community Solar Project” template (June 11, 2024)
  2. Download the current “Find a Community Solar Project” report (August 17, 2026)

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 (updated June 8, 2026) 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.

On June 2, 2025 Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2025-26 Program Year opened with 64 MW for Group A and 149 MW for Group B. Capacity was first allocated to projects on the 2024-25 Group A and Group B Waitlists, with a 20% Developer cap applied. Capacity has been fully allocated to projects submitted before June 2, 2025. The list of awarded waitlist projects can be found below.

TCS Projects Awarded 2025-26 Capacity (Updated 7.23.25 after capacity was allocated to projects who accepted waitlist selection.)

On June 3, 2024 Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2024-25 Program Year opened with 64 MW for Group A and 149 MW for Group B. Capacity was first allocated to projects on the 2023-24 Group A and Group B Waitlists, with a 20% Developer cap applied. Capacity has been fully allocated to projects submitted before June 3, 2024. The list of awarded waitlist projects can be found below.

Awarded TCS Projects in 2024-25

Following the Program re-opening, on October 31, 2025, capacity for the 2025-26 Program Year was expanded and allocated. The block capacity allocation was exceeded by first day application submissions for both Traditional Community Solar Groups A and B. As a result, per Section 1.E. of the Program Guidebook, a “First Day” Scoring process was triggered, as specified in the current Program Guidebook (published June 3, 2025). In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan (Section 7.4.3.1.) and the 2025-26 Program Guidebook (Appendix E), the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on Oct 31, 2025, that completed Part I application processing.

These scores are published below, and the full TCS scoring announcement can be found here.

2025-26 Traditional Community Solar Scores for Projects Submitted October 31, 2025Publication Date
2025-26 Traditional Community Solar Scores for Projects Submitted October 31, 2025January 27, 2026

The published scores above are final, and projects will be selected from highest to lowest score until the block capacity is filled. There are no tied scores, so a random selection event is not necessary to break any tied scores and order the waitlist. TCS Waitlists are published on the Block Capacity Dashboard page of the website.

On June 2, 2025, Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2025-26 Program year opened. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan and the 2025 Program Guidebook, the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on June 2, 2025 that completed application processing.

These scores are published below, and the full TCS scoring announcement can be found here.

2025-26 Traditional Community Solar Scoring Publication Date
2025-26 Traditional Community Solar Scoring August 21, 2025

September 15, 2025 Random Selection Event

On June 2, 2025, (Day 1 of the 2025-26 Program Year) Traditional Community Solar capacity opened. For this Program Year, capacity available for the TCS category was 64 MW for Group A and 149 MW for Group B. On Day 1, capacity was initially allocated to projects on the 2024-25 Program Year waitlist, leaving 0 MW of capacity available for Group A and Group B for newly submitted applications. The 20% developer cap was applied during this time.To summarize the new applications submitted the first day of the Program Year, a total of 41.28 MW of capacity was submitted: 11.85 MW submitted to Group A and 29.43 MW submitted to Group B. After application submission, 3.70 MW of Group A capacity and 2.00 MW of Group B capacity was withdrawn. Therefore, 8.15 MW of Group A capacity and 27.43 MW of Group B capacity was reviewed by the Program Administrator. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan and the 2025-26 Program Guidebook, we scored all TCS projects submitted on Day 1 of the Program Year and determined that a random selection event was necessary to break any tied scores and order the waitlist. Please see the full announcement for further information.

View the recording hereView the slides hereView the results spreadsheet here

On June 3, 2024, Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2024-25 Program year opened. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan and the 2024 Program Guidebook, the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on June 3, 2024 that completed application processing.

These scores are published below, and the full TCS scoring announcement can be found here.

2024-2025 Traditional Community Solar ScoringPublication Date
2024-25 Traditional Community Solar ScoringRevised September 4, 2024. Original file August 9, 2024

September 10, 2024 Random Selection Event

On June 3, 2024, (Day 1 of the 2024-25 Program Year) Traditional Community Solar capacity opened. For this Program Year, capacity available for the TCS category was 64 MW for Group A and 149 MW for Group B. On Day 1, capacity was initially allocated to projects on the 2023-24 Program Year waitlist, leaving 0.5 MW of capacity available for Group A and 28.43 MW available for Group B for newly submitted applications. Applications submitted to the Program just before the new Program Year portal closure were not processed as of June 3, 2024. Once these applications were added to the waitlist, they exhausted the available TCS Group A and Group B capacity, leaving 0 MW available for applications received on or after June 3, 2024. When projects were awarded capacity for this Program Year, the 20% developer cap was applied and will reset for the 2025-26 Program Year.

To summarize the new applications submitted the first day of the Program Year, the Program received 161.73 MW, including 6.95 MW submitted to Group A and 154.78 MW submitted to Group B. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan and the 2024-25 Program Guidebook, we scored all TCS projects submitted on Day 1 of the Program Year and determined that a random selection event was necessary to break any tied scores and order the waitlist. Please see the full announcement for further information.

View the recording here
View the slides here 
View the Q&A here
View the results spreadsheet here 

 

On June 1, 2023, Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2022-2023 Program year opened. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2022 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan (pg. 166) and the 2023 Program Guidebook (pg. 115), the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on June 1, 2023 that completed application processing.

These scores are published below, and the full TCS scoring announcement can be found here.

2023-2024 Traditional Community Solar ScoringPublication Date
2023-2024 Traditional Community Solar ScoringOriginal file August 24, 2023.

September 20, 2023 Random Selection Event

TCS Capacity for the 2022-2023 Program Year was fully awarded during the Random Selection Event. Please see the announcement for more details. Projects submitted after June 1, 2023 will be prioritized and processed in the order received and will be added to the applicable waitlists for the TCS blocks if the project meets the 5.0 point minimum threshold. These waitlists are published on the Block Capacity Dashboard and are updated regularly. Waitlisted projects will be eligible for new capacity released for the 2024-2025 Program Year beginning June 1, 2024.

View the recording here

View the slides here

View the results spreadsheet here

On November 1, 2022, Traditional Community Solar capacity for the 2022-2023 Program year opened and Approved Vendors were able to submit TCS applications. In accordance with the TCS scoring guidelines previously published in both the 2022 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan (pg. 166) and the Program Guidebook (pg. 22), the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on November 1, 2022 that are Part I verified.

These scores are published below, and the full TCS scoring announcement can be found here.

2022-2023 Traditional Community Solar ScoringPublication Date
2022-2023 Traditional Community Solar ScoringOriginal file March 10, 2023; Updated file May 3, 2023 (fifth update issued).
 

Please see the Program’s new Traditional Community Solar case study to learn how one Illinois city converted 42 acres into a productive agrivoltaics community solar project through Illinois Shines.

Category-Specific Updates

This blog includes key items specific to this Illinois Shines project category, but AVs and Designees are still expected to read all Program announcements in full, which contain other critical Program items and updates.

Community Solar Overview