Freeing the Grid is a joint initiative of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) and Vote Solar that grades states on specific policies that help to increase clean energy adoption and access to the grid.

The state grades are intended to assist policymakers and other stakeholders with identifying policy best practices for enabling the rapid growth of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar and energy storage, and benchmarking states’ existing policies against those adopted in other jurisdictions. 

Between 2007 and 2017, the project team released ten report cards that included state grades for both interconnection and net metering policies. The 2023 grades shown above indicate the quality of a state or territory’s interconnection policies for DERs, based on updated grading criteria reflecting best practices that have emerged in the last five years. However, Vote Solar and IREC recognize that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, along with low-wealth households, often live in communities with significant underinvestment in grid infrastructure. Vote Solar’s Access and Equity Advisory Committee, in partnership with IREC, is analyzing the interconnection process and associated rules through a racial and class equity lens. We expect these equitable interconnection findings to be incorporated into a future release along with Vote Solar’s grades on statewide DER compensation policies.