John Nichols is a Fellow at the Center for Energy & Environmental Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute.
The commission-based sales practices that Senate Bill 321’s consolidated-billing proposal would authorize for community solar are the same practices that generated documented consumer harm in Delaware’s third-party electric supply market — the harm that produced House Bill 393.
The Public Service Commission and the Division of the Public Advocate received numerous complaints of third-party suppliers enrolling Delaware households in new supply contracts without their knowledge or consent, by impersonating Delmarva Power’s customer service and emergency numbers. The PSC opened a formal investigation, and the matter was ultimately referred to the Delaware Department of Justice. In 2025, additional complaints regarding high bills and supplier enrollments prompted renewed regulatory scrutiny.
House Bill 393 followed, as lawmakers moved to restrict the same sales practices now being permitted for community solar.
Commission-based door-to-door enrollment of Delaware community solar subscribers is already occurring. Yet Senate Bill 321 would extend significant new billing and collection advantages to those same solar subscription providers without applying the consumer protections proposed in HB 393.
House Bill 393 prohibits six specific practices by third-party electric suppliers: excessive pricing, contracts longer than 12 months, automatic renewals without consent, variable rates, commission-based enrollment compensation and cancellation or enrollment fees.
The unanimous vote in the House of Representatives reflects legislative consensus that residential consumers cannot adequately evaluate complex energy agreements at the door or on the phone. That consensus applies equally to community solar contracts signed at the same door.
What SB 321's consolidated-billing proposal does
While House Bill 393 seeks to improve consumer transparency and restrict deceptive energy sales practices, Senate Bill 321 moves in the opposite direction, by restructuring community solar billing in a way that conceals subscription fees and shifts collection responsibilities onto Delmarva Power.
Under current law, community solar coordinators bill subscribers directly and must show the credit, the fee and the customer’s net savings. The developer collects payment and bears the risk when payment does not come.
SB 321 establishes consolidated billing, making Delmarva Power the collection agent for community solar subscription fees. It also implements net crediting, meaning customers see only the net savings. The gross credit disappears. The fee disappears.
The bill’s own language states that one purpose is “ensuring the financial stability of subscriber coordinators.” In practice, that means shifting collection responsibilities and financial risk away from solar developers and onto customers.
When one customer cannot pay, all customers do
Consolidated billing creates a bad debt problem, while net crediting helps conceal who ultimately pays when community solar bills go unpaid.
Under the current model, when a customer does not pay, Delmarva Power has no exposure, and no other ratepayer is affected. Under SB 321, Delmarva Power must pay the solar developer regardless of whether the customer has paid his/her bill.
To fund that obligation, the bill creates an arrearage escrow funded by community solar subscribers. When a solar customer defaults, the developer is paid from the escrow. Delmarva’s unrecovered charges on the same unpaid bill become bad debt recovered through rates from all Delmarva customers, including those who never enrolled.
The developer bears no collection risk.
The correct answer is already in place
The billing arrangement that already exists in Delaware is the correct one. The solar developer solicits the customer, invoices the customer, collects the fee and bears the risk when payment does not come. Delaware regulations already require the solar developer’s bill to show the credit, the fee and the customer’s net savings.
If Senate Bill 321 advances, it should not do so without all six House Bill 393 consumer protections applied to community solar and a statutory requirement that the gross credit, subscription fee and net savings appear on every subscriber bill.
Delmarva Power is a utility company — not a collection agency for privately solicited community solar contracts.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
