What you are actually signing up for
Under the Renewable Energy Growth programme, administered by Rhode Island Energy, you sell the entire output of your system at a fixed tariff rate for a long contract term rather than using the generation to offset your own consumption.
That means your electricity bill and your solar income become two separate things. You continue buying power at the retail rate and separately receive payment for what your system produces.
The rate is set for each programme year and published as a ceiling price, so what you would receive depends on when you enrol rather than being a permanent figure. Recent published figures for small residential solar have been in the high twenties to low thirties of cents per kWh depending on class and source.
Confirm the current programme year rate and the contract term directly with Rhode Island Energy. Those two numbers, and nothing else, determine what the contract is worth.
April 1, and the queue behind it
The programme year opens on April 1 each year and enrolment runs on a first come, first served basis until the programme is fully subscribed.
That makes the sequence of your project material. A system that is ready to enrol shortly after the window opens is in a different position from one arriving late in the year.
Ask your installer how long they expect the application and enrolment process to take from signature, and ask them to commit to it in writing rather than describing it generally.
Ask what happens if the programme becomes fully subscribed while your application is pending, and whether the project would then default to net metering. That is the downside case and a quote should have an answer for it.
What the fixed rate costs you
A long fixed contract removes uncertainty in both directions. If Rhode Island retail rates rise over the term, a net-metered system would have captured that and a Renewable Energy Growth contract will not.
Rhode Island residential electricity already runs around 31 cents per kWh, among the highest in the country, so the base you would be betting against is high rather than low.
You also forfeit the Renewable Energy Fund grant, which is available to net-metered systems only and has been reported at $0.65 per watt capped at $5,000 with a $2,000 storage adder.
So the comparison is not simply tariff rate against retail rate. It is the tariff over the full term against the retail rate over the full term plus a grant received at the start. Ask for both modelled on the same system.
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 receives no federal tax credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements.
On the Renewable Energy Growth route, the arithmetic is the contracted tariff times your production over the contract term, with no grant and no exposure to retail rate movement.
On the net metering route it is the retail rate applied to generation up to 125 percent of your on-site consumption, plus the Renewable Energy Fund grant at the start.
The 7 percent sales tax exemption and the 20-year property tax exemption under RIGL 44-3-21 apply either way. Ask for both routes in writing with the programme year rate confirmed by Rhode Island Energy.