Update: On Wednesday, September 5th, the MA Department of Energy Resources (DOER) made some small corrections to the previously announced final 2019 Solar Carve-out (SREC-I) and Solar Carve-out II (SREC-II) Compliance Obligations and Minimum Standards. The corrections were made to also include a small number of SRECs that the DOER approved to be transferred into the SREC-I and SREC-II auction accounts between the DOER’s preliminary minimum standard announcement in July and its final minimum standard announcement in August. The original post has been edited to reflect the corrections.

On Thursday, August 30th, the DOER announced the final 2019 SREC-I and SREC-II Compliance Obligations and Minimum Standards. This announcement follows the results of the SREC-I and SREC-II Solar Credit Clearinghouse Auctions. The final announcement differs only slightly from the preliminary announcement in July.

Solar Carve-out (SREC-I)

The DOER has determined that the 2019 Compliance Obligation for the SREC-I program will be 797,674 MWh and that the Minimum Standard will be 1.7446%. The 2019 Minimum Standard for load under contracts signed before June 28, 2013 will be 1.0967%. The Determination of the CY 2019 Total Compliance Obligation and Minimum Standard, published by the DOER, outlines how this Minimum Standard was calculated.

Solar Carve-out II (SREC-II)

The DOER has also calculated the 2019 Compliance Obligation and Minimum Standard for the SREC-II program, which are 1,060,524 MWh and 2.3195%, respectively.

In addition, the DOER calculated the 2019 SREC-II Compliance Obligation and Minimum Standard for load under contracts signed after May 8, 2016 as 1,789,567 MWh and 3.9139%, respectively. The final SREC-II baseline Compliance Obligation and Minimum Standard are slightly lower than their preliminary counterparts, primarily due to two reasons:

1. A reduction in the average capacity factor applied to estimated generation from 13.64% to 13.35% (using eight years of Massachusetts Production Tracking System production data)
2. An improvement to the SREC-II production estimation formula to account for the loss of partial MWhs left over after a reporting period, since these partial MWhs do not result in the creation of partial SREC-IIs

The adjustment to the SREC-II production estimation formula decreased the projected number of SREC-IIs to be generated by over 36,000 MWh.