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The community solar industry is at an inflection point. As projects scale and portfolios grow more complex, developers face a critical question: Can their management platform keep pace? At Neighborhood Sun, we've spent years answering that question with technology, expertise, and a relentless focus on what actually moves the needle for our partners.
Here's what makes us different—and why developers across the United States have chosen to make the switch to SunEngineTM.
We understand the value of our platform because we built it out of necessity. When we first set out on this journey as a community solar subscription coordinator, we scoured the market for a platform that did everything we wanted it to, but it didn’t exist– not yet at least. So we started putting it together ourselves, iterating weekly as we identified and built upon the feedback of our team members using it day in and day out across departments.
Our proprietary billing and customer management software for community solar projects wasn’t built overnight. But it was built with intention, nuance, and above all else– flexibility. SunEngineTM wasn’t designed for generic subscription businesses. It was designed for the unique complexity of community solar: data reconciliation with Stripe, LMI compliance tracking and forecasting, churn dashboards, subscriber allocations, generation-based billing, and the dozens of edge cases that emerge when you're managing thousands of customers across multiple utilities, states, and regulatory frameworks. All fully customizable.
The result? We release updates every single week with a detailed outline of new features and improvements each time. When a developer says "if only we could...," we don't check with a vendor or submit a feature request. We build it. That's the advantage of developing the platform in-house.
Developers don't need more data. They need the right data, in the right format, at the right time. We customize our reporting based on actual developer needs, and then we learn from those needs to make adjustments to our platform so other developer partners can benefit too.
Our billing team helps us meet developers where they’re at. For developers that prefer to just shoot us an email asking if they’re on target, our billing team offers a quick response to deliver peace of mind in plain words. For those who need to deliver data in a certain format to financiers or board members, we collaborate to design a report that eliminates wasted time your team would need to spend in Excel. Need real-time data fast? Log into SunEngineTM yourself and pull custom reports that reflect the latest data rather than waiting for a monthly report. See who's enrolled, who's paying, and what your AR balance is.
For developers that need to predict future scenarios, we take reporting a step further to run models and forecasting. When a New York developer needed to understand how different allocation adjustment strategies would impact their ICSA compliance and revenue, we didn't just pull a report. We built a model to test scenarios and predict outcomes.
The flexibility matters too. Some developers want to dive deep into our in-platform analytics. Others prefer consolidated Excel reports that match their internal templates. Many want us to reconcile SunEngine data with Stripe payments and generation files to catch discrepancies. We do all three.
Our team advocates for our developer partners, serving as watchdogs to make sure the utility is holding up their end of the bargain and advocates when issues need to be resolved.
One of Neighborhood Sun’s New York clients reached out to us for insights regarding the bill credit allocation for a project of theirs. Compared to the data the utility was providing, our team diligently noticed a significant discrepancy in the dollar value of the host bank balance data that we calculated based on the generation reports, recouping over $200k in revenue for the developer.
“The entire Freepoint Solar team is so grateful for the many ways in which Neighborhood Sun has gone above and beyond to not only help us understand the many nuanced NYSERDA and Central Hudson billing issues but also to have the dedication and follow-through to tackle them head-on until resolution. In one example, we had a dispute with the utility of more than a hundred thousand dollars. The Neighborhood Sun team helped us reconcile billing issues by both identifying a mistake made by Central Hudson and engaging with their regulatory overseers to settle.”
-Peter Ford, Freepoint Solar Managing Director and Head of Solar Development
In a New Jersey case, we noticed that a different utility had a crediting logic error– it did not take supply-side charges into account when applying bill credits. The system only applied bill credits against delivery charges, which caused large bank balances on subscriber accounts. After our team uncovered the discrepancy and got the utility to resolve the issue, subscribers could use the allocated kWh correctly, which deducted their electricity usage 50% more compared to the credits applied under the inaccurate logic only on delivery charges. As a result, developers were able to recover payments more quickly because the applied credit was effectively higher.
Complex portfolio transitions. 7 states plus Washington, D.C. 14 utilities. Nuanced project configurations with custom discount variables, rate caps, and escalators. We've seen it all, and we've built the muscle memory to move quickly.
When new states open up, we're ready. After Maryland introduced self-attestation for LMI verification, we built it out in a matter of weeks. When New York launched new disadvantaged communities mapping through NYSERDA and DEC, we integrated the API so eligibility checks could happen automatically at enrollment.
We've built APIs for census tract mapping, geo-eligibility verification, and DAC qualification across multiple program rounds. These aren't months-long implementations—they're quick additions because we control the entire stack.
Here's something our competitors miss: technology only works if people use it well. And if the technology design is informed by people who are actually using it.
Our inside sales team is a well-oiled machine, supported by automation that eliminates friction. Our outside sales partners consistently tell us they prefer signing up customers through SunEngine compared to competitor platforms. Why? More transparency, better communication through our ticketing system, and support for the challenging customer questions that inevitably arise.
Our customer development team anticipates customer needs and advocates on their behalf with the utility when things go wrong. And they do it with a level of empathy, creativity, and foresight that keeps customers subscribed even through challenging situations like Maryland's hard-to-navigate true-ups.
Here's what that really means for developers: You only get paid when customers understand what they're paying for and stay subscribed. Our team is the connective tissue that makes that happen. We run info sessions and webinars for subscribers who need more than a quick conversation. We build enrollment workflows that accommodate partner sales, vendor teams, and direct mailers. We meet customers where they are because enrollment isn't just about technology—it's about trust.
When you work with Neighborhood Sun, you're not just licensing software or hiring a company to manage your portfolio. You're getting a partner who will:
Developers switch to us—and bring entire portfolios with them—for three reasons: our proven ability to deliver without sacrificing our ethics, our outstanding customer service, and our instinctive and flexible platform capabilities.
Community solar is getting more sophisticated. LMI requirements are tightening. Compliance is getting harder. Utilities are transitioning to consolidating billing. Developers need partners who can navigate this complexity without slowing down growth.
We built SunEngineTM because the industry needed something better than retrofitted subscription software. We built it in-house because flexibility matters more than convenience. We keep building it every week because this market doesn't stand still.
The question isn't whether your platform can handle today's requirements. It's whether it can handle tomorrow's. With Neighborhood Sun and SunEngineTM, the answer is yes—because when tomorrow brings new challenges, we'll build the solution ourselves.
Ready to see what SunEngineTM can do for your portfolio? Let's talk about your specific challenges and show you how we can solve them.
