If you’re buying rooftop solar in Maryland, the number that decides your payback isn’t the price per watt. It’s 3,000.
Maryland still credits you one-for-one for the power your panels push back onto the grid. That ends July 1, 2027, or the moment the state hits 3,000 megawatts of net-metered capacity. Whichever lands first.
Your installer will quote you the date. The date is the generous reading.
The number nobody puts in the quote
The Utility RELIEF Act, House Bill 1532, was signed May 12, 2026 and became Chapter 353. After the trigger, the Public Service Commission builds a replacement program that pays smaller solar projects for “the value that distributed solar generation provides to the grid.”
How much less is that? The CCAN Action Fund, which supported the bill, says in its own summary that the compensation “will be much smaller than the current compensation.” When the advocates say it plainly, believe them.
Now look at how full the cap is. The Commission’s 2025 net metering report says installed net-metered capacity sits at roughly 1,537 megawatts, or 51.23% of the cap.
Half full. Sounds like years of room.
It isn’t. The Commission’s central finding is that the pipeline of proposed but not yet operational projects, driven by the community solar program, “is now projected to exceed the 3,000 MW cap.”
Here’s that pipeline, in the Commission’s own breakdown. About 700 megawatts of projects await Commission authorization. About 1,728 megawatts sit in utility interconnection queues. About 483 megawatts are accepted into the program and waiting to switch on.
That’s roughly 2,911 megawatts. The Commission notes it “nearly exceeds the 3,000 MW statewide cap on its own before accounting for the 1,537 MW already installed.”
Add them up and you get about 4,448 megawatts of demand against a 3,000 megawatt ceiling.
What that means on your roof
Community solar is a subscription to a share of somebody else’s array. Fine product, especially if you rent or your roof faces the wrong way. It’s also queued up to spend the capacity that sets what your own panels earn for the next twenty years.
Two different things are drawing down the same account, and only one of them belongs to homeowners.
The verdict: treat July 2027 as marketing, not as your deadline.
Do this now
Ask your installer, in writing, for two dates. When does my interconnection application go to the utility, and when is the deposit for grid upgrades paid?
Those are the dates that protect you. Per the CCAN summary, projects that hold a queue position with paid deposits may still participate in net metering even if the system goes live after July 1, 2027. A signed contract, a scheduled install, a permit application: none of those hold your place.
Get the queue confirmation number from the utility and keep it. If your installer can’t tell you where you sit in the queue, that’s your answer about how seriously they’re treating the cap.
Then run the payback both ways before you sign, once at one-for-one and once at a materially lower export credit, using our solar calculator and the ownership math on our solar hub. If the deal only works at one-for-one, you’re betting your return on a queue you don’t control.
One fair note: this same law hands you real wins. Inspections get a five-business-day clock, permit fees are capped at $500, and plug-in systems up to 1,200 watts are now allowed. And the Commission has recommended the General Assembly revisit the cap, so the ceiling itself could move.
Just don’t plan around a rescue that hasn’t happened.
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