What Makes a Great Solar Billing Service? Protecting Your Portfolio and Building Tenant Trust

Now, more than ever, delivering accurate solar billing is critical — not just for regulatory compliance, but for building lasting trust with your tenants. Solar billing, especially for multi-family properties, is more complex and more costly than ever before. If you’re a property owner or solar developer and feel overwhelmed or confused, you’re not alone.

The regulatory landscape is rapidly evolving across the U.S. — rewriting the rules for solar billing and credit allocation. In California, for instance, the shift from NEM 2.0’s simple, retail-rate crediting to NEM 3.0’s dynamic, time-based compensation model has introduced new layers of complexity. Even small billing errors can quickly escalate into tenant disputes, regulatory infractions, or missed revenue.

At Energy311, we’ve audited thousands of solar billing statements — and we’ve seen how easily these mistakes can erode tenant trust and undermine the value of your solar investment.

Below, we outline the essential components of a reliable, secure, and tenant-friendly solar billing solution.

Key Components of a Solar Billing Service

1. Fair, Transparent, and Familiar Billing

To ensure trust and minimize disputes, a solar billing service must prioritize clarity and accuracy in tenant communications. This starts with accurate interval data handling and kWh allocation, which is the absolute foundation. The system needs to precisely process 15-minute interval reads from smart meters and inverters to determine solar production and grid usage for each tenant. This means correctly accounting for complex factors like common area loads, tenant turnover, varied unit sizes, and even small details like daylight savings adjustments or missing holiday reads.

Equally vital is the proper application of local utility billing logic. Billing accuracy isn’t just about the math; it’s about adhering to regulatory fidelity. A great service understands and correctly applies jurisdiction-specific crediting models, Time-of-Use (TOU) structures, and reconciliation rules, such as California’s Virtual Net Billing Tariff (V-NBT) or New York’s VDER program. It must adapt to evolving regulations, like the shift to monthly credit reconciliation, which demands greater transparency.

A common pitfall is the incorrect handling of bypassable versus non-bypassable charges. A reliable service accurately differentiates between these; bypassable charges (like energy generation) can be offset by solar, while non-bypassable charges (like public purpose programs) cannot. Incorrectly applying credits to non-bypassable portions inflates expected savings and leads to tenant dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, accurate billing requires the correct application of baseline allowances, especially in states like California. These essential energy use quantities vary by season, ZIP code, heating type, billing cycle length, and even medical baseline eligibility. Misapplying these values can result in tenants being over- or under-credited, leading to disputes. Similarly, the proper application of energy assistance discounts like CARE and FERA is critical. Errors in enrollment, credit calculations, or discount stacking not only reduce tenant savings but can also expose property owners to legal and regulatory risks.

Finally, the billing experience itself needs to be familiar. A good service will format invoices to resemble local utility bills, making them easy for tenants to understand and trust. It should also offer co-branded invoices and provide clear breakdowns of savings from solar production, along with transparent treatment of CARE, baseline, and TOU rates.

2. Integration with Diverse Metering Technologies

A robust solar billing platform needs to be versatile, natively integrating with a wide array of leading metering and data providers. This ensures flexibility and interoperability, whether you’re working with brand-new installations or retrofitting existing systems. This includes support for solutions from UtilityAPI, Green Button, AlsoEnergy®, EKMMeter®, AccuEnergy®, Elkor®, Sense®, SolarEdge®, Enphase®, Fronius®, Sol-Ark®, SMA®, Chint®, and Ginlong Solis®, among others.

3. Built-in Security and Data Privacy

Protecting sensitive billing data is paramount. A strong solution must be built on a secure foundation, with hosting and infrastructure compliant with industry standards like ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 1/2/3, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP. This means end-to-end data encryption (both at rest and in transit), robust IAM-based access controls, and comprehensive audit logging. At the application level, billing data should be securely stored via compliant platforms, adhering to a least privilege access model for all internal users, and critically, never storing sensitive details like bank details or SSNs. Furthermore, logical data isolation between properties, role-based permissions, and adherence to SOC 2 Type II and GDPR are essential for tenant data privacy and compliance.

4. Multi-Utility Rate Engine Support

A truly comprehensive solar billing service must possess a powerful multi-utility rate engine capable of supporting and actively maintaining rate structures across numerous utilities — over 40, including major players like PG&E, SCE, FPL, ConEd, GAPower, DOMINION, Ameren, XCEL, ComEd, LADWP, SDG&E, HECO/MECO/HELCO, APS, PSEG/PSEGLI, PPL, BGE, PEPCO, ACE, JCPL, MonPower, NATGD, NYSEG, OhioEd, AppalachianPower, PacPower/RMP, PSO, SMUD, EVRSRC, CEIC, ORU, TEP, WestPennPower, ALPower, AustinEnergy, and others. This ensures that no matter where your property is located, tenants receive accurate and up-to-date billing that precisely mirrors their local utility rate schedules and formatting.

5. Seamless Online Payments and Integrated Management

For tenants, a modern solar billing service provides convenient digital options for bill payment. This includes robust online payment capabilities supporting one-time or recurring transactions, alongside a comprehensive tenant portal. This portal empowers them to track their usage, payments, and billing history, fostering transparency and self-service, all supported by helpful reminders and clear late payment penalties. To streamline operations for property owners and managers, the service also offers seamless integration with leading off-the-shelf property management systems, such as RentManager®, Yardi®, AppFolio®, Buildium®, RealPage®, Entrata®, and MRI Software®, ensuring vital data consistency and minimizing manual effort.

6. Real-Time Reporting and Robust Financial Insights

Understand the true financial impact of your solar investment with a service that provides rich savings and profit reports in real-time. Our detailed monthly reporting goes beyond basic summaries, offering a comprehensive breakdown that includes:

• Actual Utility Charges (Baseline): See what you would have paid without solar.
• Charges Under Solar + Optimized Rate Scenarios: Understand your costs with solar and how optimized rates contribute to savings.
• Explicit and Implicit Savings Breakdown: Clearly identify all cost reductions, both direct and indirect.
• Granular Data Analysis: Gain insights from interval-level demand data, precise Time-of-Use (TOU) period tagging, and accurate accounting for seasonal rate changes.

This detailed financial transparency ensures you clearly see the real-time savings from solar and the profits generated from billing tenants.