Fort Collins solar: where the utility pays you to do it right

The time of day clock runs everything

Fort Collins Utilities prices residential electricity on a two-season, two-period time of day structure. Summer is May 1 to September 30 with on peak weekdays 2 to 7 p.m. Non summer is October 1 to April 30 with on peak weekdays 5 to 9 p.m. Weekends and major holidays are entirely off peak, off peak runs about 70 percent cheaper than on peak, and the utility says most customers already take about 80 percent of their electricity off peak, per the electric rates explainer.

Study that export line, because it is the whole ballgame. A kWh pushed to the grid during summer on peak earns 25.10 cents. The same kWh exported at 11 a.m. on a Saturday earns 6.36 cents, about a quarter as much. Netting works like this, per the utility's solar fact sheet: your home consumes solar production first, the excess exports, everything is itemized monthly at the TOD rates in effect, and credits that exceed charges roll to the next month. No annual banking of energy without a battery.

One more rule that punishes careless sizing: the utility does not cut a check for accumulated credits unless the balance tops $300 on March 1 on an account older than one year, per the solar rebate FAQ. Oversize well past your load and you are parking money with the city at their convenience, not yours.

Rebates and loans, with the strings shown

The solar side pays $300 per kW DC up to $1,500, maxed at a 5 kW system, minimum 0.5 kW. Solar plus battery together cap at $7,500, and households that already claimed a rebate can claim again for additions at the same address, per the program page. Financing runs through the Epic Homes Loan: up to $50,000, no money down, repaid as a line item on the monthly city utility bill. Solar projects qualify when the project qualifies for a rebate, uses a participating contractor and gets utility approval, and solar-only projects skip the home assessment, per the financing page.

Now the strings, plainly. Rebated systems must be installed within six months of the reservation letter. The work must be done by an active Participating Solar Contractor, which fences out both DIY and any installer who has not enrolled. And this is the one to read twice: taking the rebate means selling all renewable energy credits from your system to Fort Collins Utilities for 20 years. Your panels, their green claims, for two decades. DIY installation is legal and earns nothing.

Is the trade worth it? For most owner-occupants, yes: RECs have no retail cash market a homeowner can easily reach, and $7,500 is real money. But it is a term in a 20 year contract, not a footnote, and an installer who does not mention it is telling you something about their disclosure habits.

Altitude does the work latitude cannot

Our downtown Fort Collins run models 1,508.1 kWh per year per installed kW. June leads at 150.4 kWh per kW, December bottoms at 89.5. For a city at 4,997 feet elevation, that annual figure is remarkable: on matching 20 degree research runs, Fort Collins models only about 3 percent below coastal Orange County, because altitude and clear skies claw back what latitude takes away.

PVGIS v5.2 model run by Solar Learning Lab on August 28, 2026, NSRDB radiation database. Fixed south facing mount, 30 degree tilt, 14 percent losses, downtown Fort Collins coordinates. Your roof will differ. Tool documentation at PVGIS. Snow adds a wrinkle the model smooths over: a storm can zero out a January week, then reflective ground cover flatters a clear February afternoon. Judge winter months as a season, not week by week.

The grid behind your meter is mid-transition

Your wholesale supplier is Platte River Power Authority, owned by Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland. Its current fleet, per its generation page: 297 MW wind, 202 MW solar, 78 MW hydro, 431 MW coal and 388 MW natural gas, and it generated over 1.7 million MWh of noncarbon energy in 2025, a record. The 2018 Resource Diversification Policy targets a 100 percent noncarbon mix by 2030.

The timeline has real dates on it: Craig Unit 2 retires in 2028 and Rawhide Unit 1 in 2029, with the 100 MW Weld Energy Storage Project, Black Hollow Sun Phase 2 at 107 MW and 20 MW of distributed storage planned by 2030, per the energy transition page. Why should a homeowner care? Because a utility replacing baseload coal with solar and storage will keep needing exactly what rooftop systems with batteries provide: evening capacity. The 25.10 cent on peak export credit is not generosity. It is a price signal, and it is telling you what to build.

Run your own numbers, then add the timing layer

This calculator uses the Fort Collins 13.21 cent average rate and our local production run. It cannot see the TOD clock, so it understates what a well-aimed battery earns and overstates what a dumb exporter earns. Use it for sizing and cost sanity, then make any bidder show the TOD math explicitly.

We are a solar installer and we also partner with other solar companies.

The Fort Collins paper stack

Every figure above comes from these documents, reviewed August 28, 2026.

• Fort Collins residential solar PV guide and building permit fee tables
• Electric rates explainer and 2026 rate tables with solar export credits
• Residential solar and battery storage program, solar rebate FAQ, solar fact sheet and Epic Homes Loan page
• Platte River Power Authority, generation fleet and energy transition plan
• C.R.S. 39-26-724, C.R.S. 39-26-733 and Division of Property Taxation renewable energy guidance
• EIA Table 6, city profile, PVGIS and CRS IN12611