Eligible Renewable Projects for Illinois State Funds:

The state of Illinois developed a Renewable Energy Resource Program to help several different types of projects come to life:

• Photovoltaic Solar Panel Systems
• Solar Hot Water Systems
• Solar Space Heating Systems
• Wind Systems
• Solar Pool Heating Systems

Illinois State Incentive Amounts (In Dollars and Percentages of Project Costs)

• All residential and commercial projects were eligible for funding up to 30% of the project costs.

• All non-profit and public projects were eligible at 50% of the total project costs.

• The MAXIMUM solar rebate or wind power rebate for any of these projects has a maximum of $50,000

• The minimum size of a solar panel system had to be at least 1KWH which is an incredibly small system

Major benefits of this Generous IL State Rebate for Solar:

The Illinois solar rebate program has allowed many homeowners who were interested in solar energy to actually make it a reality.  Although the funding has since dried up for this program, it helped to pay for a large part of many system owners up and running solar panels.  Another huge benefit with regards to this particular state level incentive program is that the Renewable Energy Credits(REC’s) are still owned by the energy producer which in many cases is the small business owner or homeowner.  This is considerable because the value of the REC’s will likely be increasing over time and further allow the owner of the system to help finance or pay for the up and running system.

Current Status of the Illinois Solar Rebate Program:

At the moment(December 2010), all of the funding for this incentive program has been used up or is already claimed.  Once the funding comes back for more systems, there should be an increase in the number of applications from solar system owners which can be accepted once again.