On June 2, 2025, Traditional Community Solar (“TCS”) capacity for the 2025-26 Program Year opened. For the 2025-26 Program Year, capacity available for the TCS category was 64 MW for Group A and 149 MW for Group B.
Capacity was initially allocated to projects on the 2024-25 Program Year waitlist on June 2, 2025, leaving 0 MW of capacity available for Group A and 0 MW available for Group B for newly submitted applications. The 20% developer cap was applied during this time.
At 11:59 pm CPT, June 2, 2025, the first day of application submissions for Program Year 2025-26 ended and 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MW submitted to Group B. After application submission, 3.70 MW of Group A capacity and 2.00 MW of Group B capacity was withdrawn.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 (pg. 164) and the 2025-26 Program Guidebook (pg. 157), the Program Administrator has scored all TCS projects submitted on June 2, 2025 that completed Part I application processing. These scores will be used to determine the waitlist order once random selection takes place and the 20% developer cap is applied.
The scores have been posted on the Program website on the Traditional Community Solar page of the Project Category Hub.
Next Steps
While the Program Administrator has carefully reviewed project applications to determine scores and applied scoring criteria consistently across all project applications, an Approved Vendor may appeal decisions made by the Program Administrator on the scoring of their projects. Any appeal of TCS scores will need to be submitted in accordance with the appeal process outlined in the 2025-26 Program Guidebook (pg. 28). An Approved Vendor has two weeks from August 21, 2025, to file an appeal. Submitted appeals must be received by the Program Administrator at [email protected], by 11:59 pm CPT on September 4, 2025. As the determination of appeals may influence a project’s final score, and thus possibly the final selection of all TCS projects, all appeals must be reviewed by the Agency within a distinct timeframe. The Agency intends to have all submitted appeals determined by September 11, 2025, subject to the quantity and substance of appeals submitted.
Following the resolution of scoring appeals, if any, all scores will be posted. The Agency expects that random selection of projects within tied score brackets will be necessary, based on the current scoring, but this process cannot occur until the appeal process is complete and all scores are confirmed. The Agency intends to hold the random selection event on September 15, 2025. During this process, the 20% developer cap will be applied, and the project waitlist position will be determined.
Projects that are placed on the TCS 2025-26 waitlist will remain waitlisted until capacity in the respective Group becomes available. Waitlisted projects will be eligible for new capacity released for the 2026-27 Program Year, beginning June 1, 2026.
Projects that received a score less than the required five point minimum to be placed on the waitlist may be resubmitted to the Program at any time. The AV will need to submit a new application; thus, a new application fee will be required.
TCS applications submitted after June 2, 2025 are in the process of being reviewed and scored. If an application receives a minimum of five points, it will be placed at the end of the 2025-26 Program year waitlist. If a project does not receive a minimum score of five points, the application is not eligible to be waitlisted.
Anticipated Schedule of Next Steps
- September 4, 2025, 11:59 pm CPT – Deadline for AVs to submit appeals to Program Administrator
- September 11, 2025 – Appeal determinations released to AVs and any changes to scores will be published to the Program website
- September 15, 2025 – Random selection event for projects with tied scores
- September 16, 2025 – Final scores and project selection published
Thank you!
Illinois Shines Program
[email protected]