This section is a draft excerpt from the upcoming 2025 Maine Community Resilience Workbook.

A range of models for ownership and co-development of community-scale solar, tidal, and wind projects are being developed by citizen collectives, tribal governments, and municipalities across Maine. 

• The Maine Community Power Collective is a new cooperative ownership model, building a network of small-scale solar farms (approximately 100kW per farm) that can connect to distribution grid branches that have limited solar hosting capacity. This strategy brings the solar electricity supply closer to residential customers. Backed by the U.S. DOE’s Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas grant program and other partners, member-owners benefit from a 15% savings on their electricity bills and participate in the governance of the cooperative. This model is currently being deployed in the CMP utility territory, but there are plans to expand into Versant territory as well.
• A Climate to Thrive has helped municipalities, schools, and community members with solar initiatives in Versant territory, including the Long Pond Solar Farm on an old landfill in Tremont, serving approximately 100 community member-owners.
• Revision Energy has been supporting community solar in CMP territory for many years and includes an ownership model.
• There are also many developer-owned community solar arrays to which individual people, as well as local and tribal governments, can subscribe to save money (typically around 15%) on their electric bills. EnergySage offers a tool to find these types of projects in your utility service territory and compare options.