The two routes, side by side
Under net metering you keep offsetting your own consumption. You receive bill credits for all power generated up to 125 percent of on-site consumption during a billing period, and you remain eligible for a Renewable Energy Fund grant.
Under the Renewable Energy Growth programme, administered by Rhode Island Energy, you sell the entire output of the system at a fixed tariff rate under a long-term contract, rather than offsetting what you use. Your electricity purchases and your solar income become two separate flows.
They are mutually exclusive. Choosing the Renewable Energy Growth programme forfeits the Renewable Energy Fund grant, which is available to net-metered systems only.
So this is not a technicality settled in the paperwork. It determines what the system earns, how the money arrives, and how exposed you are to future changes in retail electricity prices.
How to think about which suits you
Net metering with a grant front-loads help. The grant reduces what you pay up front, and thereafter your return tracks the retail rate, so you benefit if Rhode Island electricity prices rise and lose ground if they fall.
The Renewable Energy Growth programme does the opposite. It contracts a known rate for a long term, which removes the upside from rising retail prices and also removes the risk of falling ones. It is closer to buying an income stream than to reducing a bill.
Your view on where Rhode Island electricity prices go over fifteen or twenty years is therefore a real input. Residential rates here run around 31 cents per kWh, among the highest in the country, which is a high base to bet on rising further.
Your expected time in the house matters too. A long fixed contract attached to a property is part of what a future buyer takes on, so ask how it transfers on sale under each route.
The comparison to insist on
Ask any installer to model both routes on the same system, over the same term, with the Renewable Energy Fund grant included on the net metering side and the current programme year tariff on the other.
Ask what rate and contract term the Renewable Energy Growth projection assumed, and confirm both directly with Rhode Island Energy. Rates are set per programme year and published as ceiling prices, so a figure from an older guide may not be the one you would receive.
Ask what retail rate escalation the net metering projection assumed, and ask to see it at zero. That assumption is doing a lot of work in the comparison and it should be visible.
An installer who presents only one route, without the comparison, has made the decision for you. In Rhode Island that is the decision most worth making yourself.
Costing it out across the two routes
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 in Providence receives no federal tax credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements.
What exists is one of the two routes described above, plus, on either of them, the exemption from the 7 percent state sales tax and the 20-year property tax exemption under RIGL 44-3-21, which requires no separate application.
Rhode Island residential electricity runs around 31 cents per kWh, which is the largest term in a net metering projection and the benchmark against which a Renewable Energy Growth tariff should be judged.
Ask for both routes in writing, on the same system, with every rate and term named and sourced.