Solrite Brings 60 kWh Home Batteries to ComEd and Ameren Territory at 12 Cents per kWh
- Battery capacity: 60 kWh
- Solar rate: 12 cents per kWh
- Escalator cap: 2.9 percent
- Contract term: 25 years
- Continuous output: 15 kW
Solrite Energy launched a residential solar and storage program in Illinois on August 20, 2026. The offer pairs rooftop solar with a 60 kWh home battery at no upfront cost. Homeowners in ComEd and Ameren Illinois territory pay 12 cents per kWh for the solar output. The term runs 25 years.
A cap holds annual rate increases to 2.9 percent. Solrite finances, builds and owns the systems for the full term. The homeowner carries no equipment risk and no performance risk.
The battery is the unusual part. Most residential storage lands near 13.5 kWh, the capacity of a Tesla Powerwall 3. Solrite installs roughly four times that. Electrek reports the unit is a Duracell Power Center. It stacks 12 lithium iron phosphate modules of 5 kWh each and delivers 15 kW continuous output.
Solrite says the pack keeps essential loads running for days during an outage. Actual runtime depends on household load and on the state of charge when the grid fails.
Illinois changed the math on 2025-01-01. New solar customers moved to supply-only net metering credits. Exported power no longer offsets delivery charges, so a solar-only system returns less than it did two years ago. Storage captures that value instead and shifts output into the evening.
Microgrid Knowledge reports Ameren Illinois summer 2026 supply rates near 40 percent above 2024. ComEd rates run near 50 percent above. Solrite stacks federal clean energy tax credits and Illinois Shines renewable energy credits against the install cost.
Solrite already runs the same model in Texas, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The company calls the Illinois fleet a virtual power plant. That means it intends to dispatch the batteries together as one grid resource.
Two numbers are missing from the announcement. Solrite published no megawatt target for Illinois. It published no count of homes it expects to sign. Without those figures, nobody outside the company knows whether the fleet reaches a size that a grid operator would notice.
A virtual power plant with a few hundred houses behaves like a marketing program. One with tens of thousands behaves like a peaker. The press release does not say which one Illinois gets.
Why It Matters
Check the 2.9 percent escalator before signing. It compounds. A 12 cent rate passes 24 cents by year 25 if Solrite applies the cap every year. That still beats a utility supply rate that climbs faster. Solrite is making exactly that bet on behalf of the customer.
Illinois homeowners should compare the escalator against a ten-year rate history from their own utility, not against today’s bill. Grid planners should watch enrollment instead. At 60 kWh per house, a few thousand roofs add up to a real block of flexible capacity.
Critical Perspective
The 25-year term carries the risk that the press release assigns to Solrite. The company owns the hardware, so the homeowner owns a 25-year purchase obligation instead. That obligation sits on the house. A buyer either assumes the contract or the seller buys it out, and neither step is priced in the announcement.
The 12 cent rate beats a utility rate only while that utility rate climbs. Ameren and ComEd supply prices rose on capacity costs in the PJM and MISO auctions. Those auctions clear differently every year. The 2.9 percent escalator does not, and it keeps compounding whether or not the comparison holds.
The virtual power plant label is the weakest claim here. A virtual power plant needs a dispatch path into a market or a utility program. Solrite named no aggregation agreement with ComEd or Ameren, no MISO or PJM participation model and no capacity target. Until one of those exists, this is a fleet of individually owned batteries that happen to share an owner.
The pack itself is energy rich and power poor for whole-home duty. It holds 60 kWh but pushes 15 kW, so a house running air conditioning and a well pump draws that reserve down far faster than the multi-day framing suggests. Federal tax credits and Illinois Shines certificates also land with Solrite as owner, not with the homeowner paying 12 cents.
