Get paid to help people lower their electric bill
One cent per kilowatt-hour on every household you enroll in community solar. No cost to join, no inventory, no quota. Here's exactly what that pays — using real usage data, not made-up numbers.
How the pay works
When you refer a household and they enroll, their subscription gets sized to roughly 90% of the electricity they used over the previous 12 months. You're paid $0.01 for every kilowatt-hour of that annual allocation.
So the payout follows the customer's actual usage. A big house in Maryland is worth more than a small apartment in Maine, because the subscription is bigger. That's the whole formula:
annual kWh × 90% × $0.01 = your commission
What that actually pays, by utility
These use the U.S. Energy Information Administration's average residential consumption for each state (EIA-861, 2024 data — the most recent published). Real households vary above and below this.
| Utility territory | Avg kWh/mo | Per year | Sub size (90%) | You earn | ×10/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ComEd / Ameren — Illinois | 693 | 8,316 | 7,484 | $74.84 | $748 |
| Xcel Energy — Minnesota | 712 | 8,544 | 7,690 | $76.90 | $769 |
| BGE — Maryland | 929 | 11,148 | 10,033 | $100.33 | $1,003 |
| PSE&G / JCP&L — New Jersey | 662 | 7,944 | 7,150 | $71.50 | $715 |
| Delmarva — Delaware | 911 | 10,932 | 9,839 | $98.39 | $984 |
| National Grid / NYSEG — New York | 571 | 6,852 | 6,167 | $61.67 | $617 |
| Eversource — Massachusetts | 570 | 6,840 | 6,156 | $61.56 | $616 |
| CMP / Versant — Maine | 550 | 6,600 | 5,940 | $59.40 | $594 |
Source: EIA Annual Electric Power Industry Report (EIA-861), Table 5A, 2024. State averages across all household types — a specific customer's usage determines the actual payout.
Run your own numbers
Illustrative math based on state-average usage — not a promise of earnings. What you actually make depends entirely on how many households you enroll and their real usage.
What you're actually selling
Nothing, technically. You're not selling a product — you're telling people about a state clean-energy program that lowers their electric bill. There's no cost to the household, nothing installed at their home, no credit check in most programs, and renters qualify. That's an unusually easy conversation compared to most commission work.
Read what the catch actually is and the honest downsides before you start. Knowing the weak points is what makes you credible — and the people who oversell this are the reason the industry has a trust problem.
Who this works for
- You already talk to a lot of people — property managers, community organizations, congregations, tax preparers, insurance agents
- You want something you can do alongside existing work
- You're comfortable explaining something in plain language rather than pitching hard
- You're patient — enrollments take a few weeks to process and commissions follow that timeline
Being straight with you about the downsides
- Nothing is guaranteed. This is commission-only, 1099 contractor work. No base, no benefits, no minimum.
- Capacity runs out. Solar projects fill up. Some territories have waitlists, and you can't enroll people where there's no open capacity.
- Not every state is open. Availability shifts as projects come online.
- Payment follows enrollment, not signature. A signup that doesn't clear the utility's verification doesn't pay.
- You get paid for enrollments only. There is no payment for recruiting other agents, no downline, no tiers. If someone offers you that structure in this industry, walk away.
Apply
Tell us where you are and how you'd reach people. We'll come back with the territories that have open capacity and the current terms in writing.