A 763-kilowatt community solar array went online in March on the roof of a Public Storage facility in Justice, Illinois, a Chicago suburb of roughly 12,000 residents. The project is one of 60 planned Solar Landscape developments on Public Storage rooftops across the state. Ten are already operating.

Once the full portfolio is built, according to Solar Landscape, it will cover 5 million square feet of roof space, deliver 44 megawatts of solar capacity, generate $36 million in total subscriber savings, and create 300 construction jobs. Solar Landscape, a national developer of rooftop community solar, develops and owns the arrays, collects revenue from incentives and subscribers, and pays lease payments to the property owner hosting the panels.

The economics remain the constraint. Rooftop projects generally cost more to build and interconnect than ground-mounted arrays in rural areas, which is why only a fraction of commercial and industrial roof space currently carries panels. Federal data analyzed by solar company Lumen Energy found that commercial, industrial, and school rooftops could host enough panels to supply 581 gigawatts — nearly enough to meet the entire country's electricity demand. Cook County, which includes Justice, ranks among the metropolitan areas with the greatest untapped potential.

Illinois policy drives the pipeline

Illinois operates one of the strongest community solar markets in the country. The Solar Energy Industries Association ranks the state ahead of even California in installed community solar capacity, and Illinois is among roughly two dozen states with laws specifically enabling the model, in which subscribers receive bill credits for a share of the power generated without hosting panels themselves.

The state's 2016 clean energy law created generous incentives for community solar projects up to 2 MW each, triggering a construction boom. An energy law passed last fall expanded eligibility to projects up to 10 MW.

Most of Illinois' community solar sits on rural land or industrial brownfields; about a fifth of the arrays are rooftop installations, concentrated in the Chicago area. That share is set to grow. Paul Kovacs, project execution manager for distributed energy resources at ComEd, the utility serving northern Illinois, said rooftopes are an increasing priority for community solar. ComEd plans to have more than 400 community solar arrays in service by the end of this year, roughly 100 of them on rooftops.

At a July 30 event promoting the Justice project, Melissa Washington, ComEd's senior vice president for government relations and external affairs, called rooftop community solar "an elegant solution" for deploying clean energy to meet rising demand — citing storms three days earlier that had left many ComEd customers without power. Rooftop community solar, she said, "checks the box for every single one" of the utility's three mandates: supplying power, keeping electricity affordable, and addressing climate change.

Incentive structure and federal deadlines

The Public Storage projects fall under Illinois' Community-Driven Community Solar program, which favors arrays whose subscribers are predominantly local households, small businesses, and nonprofits rather than a few large subscribers capturing the savings. Under state law, project owners sell renewable energy credits to utilities, improving the financing equation. Awards are competitive, with scoring points for projects in designated low-income or environmental justice census tracts, high proportions of local subscribers, community involvement in design, and hiring through state workforce training programs. Community solar credits carry a $5-per-megawatt-hour premium for rooftop installations.

The Justice project earned points for charitable contributions and for hosting a workforce training program with STEP-UP Solar, a New Jersey–based training nonprofit, according to Solar Landscape marketing director Samantha Kanipe.

State incentives now carry more weight because federal tax credits expired under the Trump administration's 2025 spending bill. Arrays on commercial and industrial sites can still qualify for federal credits if they are operational by the end of 2027, or if they began construction by July 4 of this year.

"We began construction on a ton of projects before July 4," including all the Public Storage ones, said Mark Schottinger, president and chief legal officer of Solar Landscape. He noted the company can build an array like the one in Justice in about six months. The speed and scalability of commercial-industrial real estate is the draw, he said: major logistics, storage, and big-box companies "have millions of square feet around the country."

Local officials see fiscal returns. "This creates more opportunities for people, job creation, and revenue that can be taxed by our state," said Krzysztof Wasowicz, mayor of Justice since 2007, who otherwise voices skepticism about solar on farmland grounds. "This is going to be an excellent addition to this village."

Schottinger described rooftop community solar as still in its "early innings" but growing exponentially. The milestones to watch: completion of the 60-project Public Storage portfolio toward the 44 MW target, ComEd's year-end deadline for 400 arrays in service, and the federal safe-harbor cutoffs that will determine how much of the remaining rooftop pipeline gets built.