Goodbye, Arcadia Power

Way back in May of 2019, I signed up for Arcadia Power. A couple years later, in July of 2021, I wrote a review of the program.

Essentially, in return for an upfront investment of $100 in a community solar program, I was going to get a small discount on my electric bill for ten years.

It’s now 2026 and it has been seven years since 2019. Earlier this month, on March 4th, I received the following email:

Action required: Pay your utility directly & Portable Panel discontinued

Hi Joseph,

We’re writing to inform you of an important update to your Arcadia account. Arcadia is discontinuing the Portable Panel product. As part of this change:

1. Arcadia will no longer process utility bill payments on your behalf.
2. We are refunding your remaining Portable Panel credit balance.

Important: You must begin paying your utility directly

Effective 03/05/2026, Arcadia will no longer process payments for the utility account(s) below:

Utility account #: ***

Service address: ***

⚠️ This means Arcadia will no longer submit payments to your utility on your behalf. If you do not take action, your utility bills will not be paid and you may incur late fees or risk service interruption.

What you need to do

• Watch for your next bill directly from your utility.
• Pay all bills issued on or after 03/05/2026 directly to your utility.
• (Optional) Set up autopay directly with your utility provider.

You will also receive a follow-up letter by mail with this information. Please continue paying any bills already issued by Arcadia directly to us.

How to claim your refund

Within 48 hours, you will receive an email from noreply@checkissuing.com with instructions on how to securely access your refund via e-check. Please ensure you follow the steps in that email to access your remaining balance.

⚠️ If you do not see the message in your inbox within 48 hours, be sure to check your spam or promotions folders.

We appreciate your participation in the Portable Panel program and your continued support of clean energy.

If you have any questions, our Customer Support team is here to help at support@arcadia.com or 866-526-0083 (Mon–Fri, 8am–7pm ET).

Thank you, Arcadia

A few days later, on March 6th I received a digital check for $63.24 from Arcadia.

Curious if I ended up ahead with my investment, I pulled some my records from Arcadia - which have my payments from December 2019 through February 2026.

According to the records, I paid Arcadia a total of $4,280.92 whereas they paid my utility $4,392.51, meaning I saved $111.59.

December 2019 through February 2026 is 75 months. If I truly saved $111.59 out of an initial $100 investment, plus the $63.24 refund I received this month, that means my $100 investment returned $174.83 over 76 months - a net return of $74.83. Simple interest math says the return was $74.83/$100, or 74.83%. If I calculate the yearly return the quick-but-wrong way, that’s 74.83%/76 months - 0.98% per month - multiply by 12 to get 11.82%.

The more correct equation is PV(1+i/n)^nt=FV. “PV” here is $100, “FV” is $174.83. “n” is 12 (since I got a discount every month) but since it truly didn’t compound, I feel it would be better to assume “n” is 1 and “t” - which is number of years - is 76/12, or 19/3 years, or 6⅓ years, or six years and four months.

Plugging the values in and we get $100(1+i)^(19/3)=$174.83. Wolfram Alpha says the answer is about 0.092214, or slightly more than a 9% return.

This return isn’t including the few times I got a referral bonus ($10 each time), the fact that I was able to pay with credit card without fees (and receive 2% or 5% cash back depending on the card I was using), and I feel that the data I pulled from Arcadia was missing the first few months and didn’t properly record my discount in the first 18 recorded months.

All in all, it was a good six years.