Canceling Your Membership
Where to begin and how long does it take?
Subscribers may need to terminate their membership for a variety of reasons. Maybe they’ve moved, taken the exciting step of installing their own residential array, or simply decided they’d like to explore other options. While we love having members stay with us long term, we make cancelation hassle-free by simply requesting your notice of intent to cancel in writing, via email, or over the phone!
It’s important to know that while submitting a termination request is easy, full removal from a community energy project can’t happen immediately. Regional program rules determine the schedule that community energy providers must follow when submitting removal requests to each utility provider. This, combined with the cyclical nature of utility service periods and community energy production months, means that a full removal may take between 3-6+ months, depending on the territory.
To account for this, community energy contracts largely request anywhere from 60-180 days’+ notice of cancelation so the removal occurs by your preferred day.
Is there a cancelation fee?
Terms may vary based on the project a subscriber has chosen; however, the industry has largely moved away from assessing any fees, penalties, or additional costs to cancel. Typically, the only payments subscribers are asked to make after submitting a termination request are simply the amounts owed for benefits received while the complete removal is processed.
What happens when you cancel?
When we receive a cancelation request, our team swiftly begins the process of removing the account from its assigned energy project. Since the reports that we submit to utility service providers typically must show that 100% of the energy project is assigned, this is done by either bringing in a new account as a replacement or finding current members who could use an increase.
When will the utility be notified of your cancelation?
We are committed to following regional guidelines and ensuring removals are submitted to the utility as quickly as possible.
The rules surrounding this process vary by region. Community energy providers are allowed, in many regions, to submit an updated subscriber list once a month. It’s on this list that utilities are informed an account should be disenrolled.
However, some territories must adhere to a more limited schedule. In Massachusetts for example, most providers are allowed to submit changes to their subscriber base six times a year in National Grid territory and only four times a year in Eversource territory.
Why does the utility need multiple service periods to stop applying credits to your account?
Once a removal request is received by the utility, it generally takes at least 2 billing cycles to stop applying new energy credits to an account. The utility needs time to process all updates, and then they must complete the billing cycle that is already in process once the update is implemented before they can stop applying new credits.
You’ve submitted a termination request - why are we still billing you?
A positive feature of most community energy programs is that subscribers are not billed until AFTER their utility account has benefitted from their monthly energy credit. Because we don’t issue a bill until the utility confirms the value of the benefit received, our billing often occurs at least a month after the energy credit was applied.
This cushion of time between credits earned and credits billed means we must still issue invoices for all credits a subscriber benefitted from before the cancelation was submitted and while the utility processed the removal. Subscribers should expect to receive several more invoices for all credits earned while their account is brought to a close. This is the reason many subscriber agreements ask members to agree to pay for all credits received before and after a notice of cancelation has been submitted.
Importantly, these final bills should not in any way increase overall costs or be seen as penalties or fees. They are simply the final discounted bills for energy credits that continued to reduce electricity costs while a cancelation was completed.
If you’ve recently canceled and have questions about the specific terms of your removal, please refer to your subscriber agreement or contact our customer experience team.
It’s important to know that while submitting a termination request is easy, full removal from a community energy project can’t happen immediately. Regional program rules determine the schedule that community energy providers must follow when submitting removal requests to each utility provider. This, combined with the cyclical nature of utility service periods and community energy production months, means that a full removal may take between 3-6+ months, depending on the territory.
To account for this, community energy contracts largely request anywhere from 60-180 days’+ notice of cancelation so the removal occurs by your preferred day.
Is there a cancelation fee?
Terms may vary based on the project a subscriber has chosen; however, the industry has largely moved away from assessing any fees, penalties, or additional costs to cancel. Typically, the only payments subscribers are asked to make after submitting a termination request are simply the amounts owed for benefits received while the complete removal is processed.
What happens when you cancel?
When we receive a cancelation request, our team swiftly begins the process of removing the account from its assigned energy project. Since the reports that we submit to utility service providers typically must show that 100% of the energy project is assigned, this is done by either bringing in a new account as a replacement or finding current members who could use an increase.
When will the utility be notified of your cancelation?
We are committed to following regional guidelines and ensuring removals are submitted to the utility as quickly as possible.
The rules surrounding this process vary by region. Community energy providers are allowed, in many regions, to submit an updated subscriber list once a month. It’s on this list that utilities are informed an account should be disenrolled.
However, some territories must adhere to a more limited schedule. In Massachusetts for example, most providers are allowed to submit changes to their subscriber base six times a year in National Grid territory and only four times a year in Eversource territory.
Why does the utility need multiple service periods to stop applying credits to your account?
Once a removal request is received by the utility, it generally takes at least 2 billing cycles to stop applying new energy credits to an account. The utility needs time to process all updates, and then they must complete the billing cycle that is already in process once the update is implemented before they can stop applying new credits.
You’ve submitted a termination request - why are we still billing you?
A positive feature of most community energy programs is that subscribers are not billed until AFTER their utility account has benefitted from their monthly energy credit. Because we don’t issue a bill until the utility confirms the value of the benefit received, our billing often occurs at least a month after the energy credit was applied.
This cushion of time between credits earned and credits billed means we must still issue invoices for all credits a subscriber benefitted from before the cancelation was submitted and while the utility processed the removal. Subscribers should expect to receive several more invoices for all credits earned while their account is brought to a close. This is the reason many subscriber agreements ask members to agree to pay for all credits received before and after a notice of cancelation has been submitted.
Importantly, these final bills should not in any way increase overall costs or be seen as penalties or fees. They are simply the final discounted bills for energy credits that continued to reduce electricity costs while a cancelation was completed.
If you’ve recently canceled and have questions about the specific terms of your removal, please refer to your subscriber agreement or contact our customer experience team.
