Solar & batteries with CORE Electric Cooperative

CORE had more than 164,000 members as of June 2026 and a service area of nearly 5,000 square miles across parts of 11 counties east, west and south of Denver. That footprint includes foothill communities like Evergreen as well as plains east of the metro, and it cuts through places people assume are Xcel — parts of southeast Aurora among them — so check the name on your bill before you run any numbers.

CORE bought most of its power from Xcel Energy until that contract ended after 2025; it now buys under several long-term agreements and owns a share of Comanche Unit 3 in Pueblo. For solar owners that history matters less than the tariff, which is what the rest of this page covers.

CORE only net-meters residential systems at 10 kW AC or below. Stay under that and every kWh you export offsets a kWh you’d otherwise buy at about 11.6¢, until the annual true-up. Go over it and your whole system drops out of net metering: every exported kWh is credited at avoided cost, about 4.6¢ as of May 2026.

That’s a big enough gap that we design CORE homes to the inverter’s AC rating, not just the panel count. If your usage genuinely needs more than 10 kW, we’ll usually show you a 10 kW array plus a battery before we show you a larger array, because the battery keeps more of the extra production inside your house.

Every CORE residential bill includes a demand charge of $5.47 per kW, set by your single highest 60-minute average between 4 and 8 p.m. in the billing period. A dinner hour with the oven, dryer and an EV charger running can easily set a 7–10 kW peak, which is $38–$55 on that month’s bill before you’ve bought a single kWh.

Solar panels don’t help much here: the sun is fading by 5 p.m. and gone by 8 in winter. A battery told to cover the house from 4 to 8 p.m. can hold that peak down, and on CORE that is often worth more than any export credit. We’ll estimate it from your actual interval data rather than a rule of thumb.

The strongest CORE case is a home that uses most of its solar in the daytime or that stays well under 10 kW — a household with a heat pump, a home office, or an EV that charges mid-day. Payback typically stretches if you export much of your production in summer and only draw it back in winter, because anything left after April is settled at avoided cost.

Because the 30% federal credit ended for owned systems finished after 2025, owned-system paybacks are longer than they were in 2024. A lease or PPA, where the owner can still claim §48E if the system is in service by the end of 2027, can make sense on a CORE home — ask us to run both.