What changed on April 1, 2026
PURA restructured Energy Storage Solutions in Docket 25-08-05, effective April 1, 2026, moving the programme from an upfront-heavy design to an enrollment incentive plus active dispatch performance pay.
The enrollment incentive is $30 per kWh for most customers, against $250 per kWh under the previous design. A Grid Edge adder of $130 per kW applies on constrained circuits, so the location of your home on the network genuinely changes what you are offered.
Performance pay runs for a 10-year term at $300 per average kW discharged during peak events for standard customers, $450 for underserved communities and $550 for income-eligible customers.
Events are split across a summer period from June to September and a winter period from November to March. So the programme is not paying you to own a battery, it is paying you for the capacity you actually deliver when the grid calls on it.
Reading a battery quote under the new design
The practical consequence is that a battery quote can no longer be evaluated from a single upfront number. Most of the value now arrives over ten years and depends on dispatch performance, which means the assumptions behind it matter.
Ask what average kW the model assumes your battery discharges during peak events, and where that figure came from. That single assumption drives most of the projected value, and a confident round number without a basis is a warning sign.
Ask whether your address sits on a Grid Edge circuit, since the $130 per kW adder is significant and is not something you can determine yourself.
Ask what happens if you do not participate fully in an event, whether through a low state of charge or a household need. Understanding the downside of a missed event is easier to establish before enrolling than afterwards.
One thing a battery does not fix
It is worth being explicit about a limit, because the two Connecticut changes of 2026 get conflated. The Solar Energy Adjustment on RRES Netting projects, set at $0.0402 per kWh for 2026 enrollees, is charged on total generation rather than on exports.
That means adding storage does not reduce it. A battery changes when you use your generation, not how much of it exists, and the charge attaches to generation.
So a quote that presents a battery as a way to mitigate the adjustment has the mechanism wrong. The reasons to add storage in Stamford are outage resilience, self-consumption value under the Netting tariff, and the ESS performance payments.
Those are good reasons. They are just different reasons, and it is worth knowing which one your installer is actually relying on when they show you the combined number.
Costing it out with the adjustment applied
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase receives no federal tax credit on either the panels or the battery. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements.
Energy Storage Solutions pays $30 per kWh at enrollment, plus the $130 per kW Grid Edge adder where applicable, plus 10 years of performance pay at $300, $450 or $550 per average kW depending on your category.
On the solar side, RRES gives a 20-year contract on the Netting or Buy-All tariff, with the Solar Energy Adjustment applying to 2026 Netting enrollees at $0.0402 per kWh of total generation.
Add the sales and use tax exemption under CGS Section 12-412, the property tax exemption under CGS Section 12-81, and the electricity you stop buying at roughly 27.4 cents per kWh. Ask for the battery value split into enrollment and performance lines rather than as one number.