The slides from SRECTrade’s March 12, 2014 New Jersey SREC market update webinar are available here. Steven Eisenberg, Alex Sheets and Sam Rust present SREC issuance and pricing numbers. Additionally, three supply vs. demand scenarios, that assume a high, low, and consistent build rates, are discussed to illustrate potential SREC market supply and demand over the next few years.
A recording of the webinar can be watched by clicking on the image below.
SRECTrade will host a webinar covering the latest pricing and supply numbers for the New Jersey SREC market. Like all SRECTrade market update webinars, it will be open to the public.
The webinar will be held on Wednesday, 3/12/14, at 2 pm EST.
Prices for New Jersey SRECs have increased dramatically over the last month from the $140s in early December to current pricing in the low $170s. The RY2014 vintage cleared in our December auction at $138.01 and the January auction just cleared $169 for the same product, but recent over-the-counter deals have been done in the $170s.
In recent months, the monthly build-rate for new solar projects has been relatively restricted and significantly lower than build rates seen in RY2013. The average for the last six months (LSM) is 11.7 MW per month, while the last 12 months (LTM) is 16.9 MW. Lower build rates, mean fewer SRECs than expected, which in turn causes both sellers and buyers to be more aggressive in how they price the market. However, the market remains fundamentally over-supplied in RY2014 when taking into consideration unretired eligible SRECs from previous reporting years and SRECs minted from RY2014 generation.
Another reason that may explain the run-up in prices and volumes-traded is the forthcoming Basic Generation Service (BGS) electricity procurement.
Each year, in early February, the regulated electricity utilities in New Jersey conduct an auction in which wholesale power providers compete to provide Basic Generation Service to consumers in New Jersey. In providing electricity, the wholesale power suppliers must also provide the requisite SRECs corresponding to the electricity load. In short, during the BGS auction period, there is a significant increase in market activity. This alone warrants attention from sellers. Coupled with recent run-up in prices, sellers should be especially poised to act.
With increased prices and increased market activity, now could be an ideal time to lock in your revenue for SREC sales. We’re here to help facilitate the transaction, so please feel free to contact us.
TweetSRECTrade recorded a NJ Market Update webinar on September 12, 2013. To watch the webinar click on the image below.
On Thursday, September 12th at 2 p.m. Eastern, SRECTrade will host a webinar covering the New Jersey SREC market. Registration for the webinar is open to anyone, but the focus will be on providing market information to commercial and institutional market participants.
Register for the webinar by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/17ZjEyn
About the speakers
PSE&G has announced that they will begin accepting applications this fall for the Extended Solar Loan Program. This program will finance 97.5MW of solar over the next three years. The program is similar to the previous Solar Loan program with some important changes. Like the previous program, the Extended Solar Loan will offer a loan to system owners which is repaid with either cash or the proceeds of the sale of SRECs generated by the system and sold by PSE&G. Also like the previous program, there will be a floor price on the amount the loan recipient is credited for those SRECs even if the actual sales price falls below that floor price. As is currently occurring in the original Solar Loan Program, ratepayers make up the difference when the market price falls below the floor price.
The major change in this program is that the floor price will not be set by PSE&G, but will be determined by a competitive solicitation. PSE&G will hold 4-6 competitive solicitations each year, offering only a portion of the total capacity of each segment each round. In addition, the loans will all be 10 years, and there is no longer a “call option” for SRECs. Finally, this solicitation will require borrowers to pay administrative costs associated with the loans (fee structure for residential/commercial). There will be a set interest rate of 11.179% for all borrowers.
This program is only available to new, un-built systems. In general the program will contribute to increased oversupply in the NJ SREC market, since it increases the SREC supply and allows systems to be built at a higher price than the current SREC market price supports, with ratepayers making up the difference.
TweetLast month the New Jersey Office of Clean Energy (NJ OCE) and the Christie Administration released data showing that over 1 gigawatt of solar had been installed in New Jersey. As of this writing, those numbers have increased to approximately 1.03 gigawatts. In 2012 alone, New Jersey was only surpassed by California and Arizona for installed solar capacity. See GTM’s public 2012 report for details and for access to the most recent NJ OCE data visit here. Additionally, our monthly capacity report of solar generators registered in PJM GATS shows that 973.8 MW of NJ solar is registered, following the expected lag between installed capacity announced by New Jersey and GATS registrations.
At face value, more solar is a good thing, right? Yes, if all you care about is the amount of solar installed and you disregard much of the complexity of state’s various different electricity policies and the wide spectrum of impact across stakeholder groups. Luckily, SREC markets are straightforward when it comes to the relationship of installed capacity to SREC price. In simple terms, when New Jersey’s installed capacity outstrips the state’s goal for installed capacity we see an over-supplied SREC market and depressed SREC pricing. In even simpler terms this means that photovoltaic facility owners make less money overall per SREC than they would have if New Jersey wasn’t consistently exceeding its solar goals.
So how does this happen? Why is solar getting installed even though SREC prices are trading in the low $100s? One blaring factor is that the cost of installing solar has dramatically decreased. Installers are getting more efficient at building projects and pure equipment costs have plummeted. Referencing the GTM report again we see that pricing blended across all solar sectors (utility, commercial and residential) has decreased from over $5/W on average to around $3/W. That’s a 40% drop in overall cost over two years and this doesn’t even take in to account financing innovations like solar leases and easier access to renewable energy loans.
Some industry participants point to New Jersey SREC legislation (SB 1925) passed in 2012 as a saving grace for the New Jersey SREC market. The legislation increased New Jersey’s solar goals beginning in June 2013 (the start of energy year 2014) and was hailed as a bill to save the New Jersey solar market. The legislation forces a dramatic increase in SREC requirements from approximately 596,000 SRECs for EY2013 to approximately 1,633,394 SRECs for EY2014. Unfortunately this is still not enough to push the NJ market in to under-supply. Going off of numbers from our Q4 2012 SREC Market Monitor report, New Jersey would need to install approximately less than 10 MW/month to push the market into under supply by the 2015 energy year. In the first quarter of 2013, NJ installed over 70 MW of solar capacity, surpassing the less than 10 MW/month by an average of 2.5 times each month. Given this activity, it’s not irrational to calculate an over-supplied market moving into EY2015 and beyond. The build rate of solar capacity in NJ must slow down for NJ solar asset owners to experience an under supplied market.
For detailed data on the SREC markets, purchase the SREC Market Monitor report.
TweetLast week our brokerage team ran a webinar covering the New Jersey SREC market. The webinar recording is available here. The webinar covered a relatively high level analysis of the New Jersey SREC market and was geared towards large commercial and institutional level clients.
We will present another webinar on Wednesday, 2/27/2013 at 3:30 pm EST designed for a general audience of existing and potential clients and installer partners. The webinar outlines some of the basic requirements for participating in the New Jersey SREC market, SRECTrade best practices and options for SRECTrade clients to sell their SRECs.
Register for the webinar here: https://srectrade.clickwebinar.com/New_Jersey_Client_Update/register
As always, the webinar will be recorded and posted online if you can’t attend the actual webinar.
Topics we will cover include:
Tweet
On Friday, 2/15/2013, SRECTrade hosted a webinar covering the New Jersey SREC market. SRECTrade’s brokerage team presented an analysis of New Jersey installed solar capacity and current SREC pricing.
Click the image to watch the webinar.
TweetSRECTrade’s brokerage team will cover NJ SREC market trends and capacity projections. The webinar is particularly geared for institutional and commercial scale market participants. Register for the webinar by clicking this link: https://srectrade.clickwebinar.com/NJ_Market_Update/register
About the speakers
Brad Bowery is the CEO of SRECTrade, a company he has managed since 2008. Under Brad’s stewardship SRECTrade provides SREC services for over 5,000 facilities and 70+ MW of aggregated solar capacity. Brad holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Steven Eisenberg is the Vice-President of Business Development. Steven has been with SRECTrade since 2010 and is responsible for starting and managing SRECTrade’s growing brokerage and institutional SREC asset management business units.
Alex Sheets comes to SRECTrade from SunEdison. As SRECTrade’s Director of Environmental Markets, Alex assists buyers and sellers in originating, executing, and negotiating SREC transactions in the over the counter markets.
