This $0-down Illinois home solar deal includes a huge 60 kWh battery

A Texas company called Solrite Energy is now offering solar panels plus a large home battery to Illinois homeowners for no money down. Solrite owns and maintains the equipment, and you buy the solar power it makes at 12 cents per kilowatt-hour under a 25-year contract. That rate can climb up to 2.9% a year, and you'll still get a separate utility bill for grid electricity and other charges. The offer is available to qualifying homes in ComEd and Ameren Illinois service areas, and homeowners who already have solar can apply to add the battery too, pending a check that it's compatible with their existing system.

The battery is the big draw: a 60 kilowatt-hour unit, more than four times the size of a typical home battery like Tesla's Powerwall 3. Solrite says it can keep essential circuits running for days during an outage, though actual backup time depends on how much power your household uses and how charged the battery is when the grid fails. This matters in Illinois because the state stopped giving new solar customers full credit for excess power sent to the grid starting January 2025, so a battery lets you store more of your own solar for later instead of selling it back cheaply.

Solrite keeps the federal tax credits and Illinois clean energy credits since it owns the equipment, and it also plans to link batteries across homes to help balance the power grid during peak demand. The company hasn't said how many homes it expects to sign up.