Cook County Urges Residents to Go Solar

Group buy program to make solar energy more affordable

Cook County is partnering with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) and the Citizens Utility Board to make solar energy more accessible and affordable for County residents. The partnership is coordinating a residential solar group buy program called Solarize Chicagoland, making it available to residents in Cook, DuPage, Kane and Will Counties.

The program takes advantage of volume purchasing, which can significantly reduce the up-front costs of installing solar on homes. The more people that participate, the lower the cost is for the solar installer and the lower the prices are for participants.

The price comes down for everyone when certain benchmarks are surpassed. Once the participants of the group buy collectively reach 50 kW of capacity, everyone gets an additional price reduction. Price reductions are also triggered at150 kW and at 250 kW. A final reduction is triggered above 500 kW.

To learn more about Solarize Chicagoland, please attend a Solar Power Hour. These free, no obligation information sessions are being held throughout the summer. The schedule is listed on www.solarizechicagoland.com.

The Solar Power Hour covers the basics of solar, financial implications for residents and how the Solarize Chicagoland program works. Residents can get a free, no obligation site assessment. Residents have until September 30, 2019 to decide whether to get solar through the program. 

The special pricing available through this program will be available to residents until the program reaches capacity of 150 homeowners. After the first 150 site assessments program coordinators will maintain a waitlist of additional interested participants.

If you have any questions about the program,  please visit www.solarizechicago.com or contact Christina Uzzo at the Citizens Utility Board: cuzzo@CitizensUtilityBoard.org or (312) 292-5871.