SRECTrade hosted a webinar on April 8, 2014, covering the PA and OH SREC markets. The webinar is approximately 25 minutes long and is broken in to three main categories:
The slides from the webinar are available here and the webinar recording can be viewed by clicking the image below.
Tweet
SRECTrade will host a webinar covering the latest pricing and supply numbers for the OH and PA SREC markets.
The webinar is open to the public and will be held on Wednesday, 4/8/14, at 2 pm ET.
On March 17th, 2014, Stakeholders in the Massachusetts DOER’s Solar Carve-Out received an email with two key announcements regarding the proposed revisions to the RPS Class-I Regulation.
1) That last week, the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy submitted their comments to the DOER on the proposed revisions. These comments were broken up into nine items, which are summarized below.
2) That the draft of the Solar Carve-Out II Program’s Assurance of Qualification Guideline was released for public comment and review. This is particularly relevant to systems that are qualified under the “Managed Growth” market sector. The DOER will be accepting comments on the draft Guideline through March 28, 2014. All comments should be emailed to DOER.SREC@state.ma.us and should contain the subject line “Assurance of Qualification Guideline Comments.”
Summary of the Committee’s comments:
Item 1: Price Volatility
Following the initial boom in solar development, spurred on by SRECs trading near the Alternative Compliance Price, SREC prices have dropped significantly. The Committee believes that the Managed Growth concept will be a useful “tool for reducing volatility in the market which should benefit both retail electric suppliers and solar facility owners.”
Item 2: Cost
The Committee supports the 1600 MW solar goal by 2020, but believe it is “important that the program is designed to achieve its goal at low costs” to the consumers. Gradually lowering the ACP and Clearinghouse Auction-II fixed prices reduces the risk of high cost to ratepayers funding these programs.
SREC Factor: Different factors to different market segments in order to more accurately match costs for each of these segments. “Considering the falling costs of solar,” committee members “encourage the DOER to review the SREC Factor Guideline even earlier than…March 31, 2016.”
Competition Imperative to Assure Low Costs: With its Guidelines, the DOER has left the possibility for competition open. The committee believes that “competition can be effective at lowering costs.”
Achieving Transmission and Distribution (T&D) Benefits to Maximize Cost Effectiveness: There is little incentive for solar growth at locations on the distribution grid that would provide maximum benefit to the grid, and ultimately ratepayers. The Committee Encourages the DOER to work closely with solar developers, utilizing tools such a solar maps, and to advocate for integrated distribution programs, which could lower total program costs.
Item 3: Equity Between Market Sectors
Under SREC-I, ground and roof projects were worth the same, but the latter cost significantly more per unit of capacity. SREC Factor helps correct the bias towards the larger systems.
Item 4: The Solar Carve-Out and Net Metering
The committee “hopes that…Solar Carve-Out II…[takes] into account the limitations on aggregate net metering capacity.” Additional changes may be necessary “to continue the growth of solar in Massachusetts.”
Item 5: Third-Party Ownership versus Direct Ownership
Though “Third-Party Ownership structures have provided…homeowners, businesses, municipalities and other government entities…with access to solar and lower energy costs,” the committee also recognizes the benefits of homeowners and businesses owning their systems outright. The committee strongly supports the DOER’s ACP-funded financing program to “help address barriers to direct ownership.”
Item 6: Class I RPS Eligibility for non-SREC GIS Certificates
SREC Factor ostensibly limits the demand for SRECs associated with the installed capacity target by generating a set portion of an SREC per megawatt-hour. However, the committee sees no reason why the portion of solar electricity that does not fall under Solar Carve-Out II Renewable Generation Attributes also does not fall under RPS Class I Renewable Generation Attributes.
Item 7: Restricting Market Sector C to a Single Parcel of Land
The section stating that arrays with a capacity less than 650kW are also eligible for Market Sector C does not specify that this capacity should be measured as the total capacity of Solar Carve-Out II units on a single parcel of land. The committee believes there ought to be such a provision: without one, larger projects that should be restricted to managed growth may inappropriately be able to access Sector C.
Item 8: Access to Solar for Non-Profit Institutions
Although non-profits make up 15% of the Commonwealth’s employment, “less than 3% of solar projects have been developed by or on behalf of non-profits.” The DOER should institute changes to the proposed regulations or to the SREC Factor guidelines to help remedy this discrepancy.
Item 9: Pre-2010 Solar Systems
Although early-adopters of the commonwealth rebate program may have received larger rebates than late-comers, many of these aggregators “have abandoned their solar REC aggregation” due to the scarcity of Class I REC-generating facilities in Massachusetts, and consequent difficulty of selling their attributes. The committee would like to the DOER consider offering Solar Carve-Out I or II eligibility to pre-2010 systems.
Further/In-depth reading:
The Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy’s full comments
RPS Solar Carve-Out II Assurance of Qualification Guideline
DOER Draft of SREC-II Regulations
The Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard – Class I
Tweet
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.
SRECTrade’s March 2014 SREC Auction closed on 3/4/2014. Below are the clearing prices by vintage across the SRECs transacted in the auction.
| SREC Prices | SREC Vintage Year | |||
| State | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
| Delaware | N/A | N/A | $40.00 | N/A |
| Maryland | N/A | N/A | $135.00 | $135.01 |
| Massachusetts | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| New Jersey | N/A | $151.51 | $155.01 | $161.00 |
| Ohio Sited | N/A | N/A | $65.00 | N/A |
| Ohio Adjacent | N/A | N/A | $55.00 | N/A |
| Pennsylvania | N/A | N/A | $55.00 | $55.00 |
| Washington, DC | N/A | N/A | $480.00 | $480.00 |
The next SRECTrade auction for the PJM and MA SREC markets closes on Tuesday, April 15 at 5 p.m. ET.
TweetOn Thursday, February 13th, the DOER announced that a new draft of the Massachusetts RPS Class I Regulations 225 CMR 14.00 was formally submitted to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy for review. The draft contains key language for the creation of the touted SREC-II program. Please find the announcement letter from the DOER here. The filing is available here. Given this step and further formal review requirements that the revised regulations must undergo over the next few weeks, it is our understanding that the SREC-II program will likely become effective in early Q2 2014.
The DOER’s letter also clarifies that non-operational projects qualified under SREC-I may not also be qualified under SREC-II, without first withdrawing SREC-I qualification.
TweetThe following post is a monthly update outlining the megawatts of solar capacity certified to create SRECs in the Solar REC markets that SRECTrade serves. All PJM data is based on the information available in PJM GATS as of the date noted. All MA data is based on the information provided by the DOER as of the date noted. This analysis does not include projects that are not yet registered and certified with the entities noted herein.
A PDF copy of this table can be found here.
As of February 11, 2014 there were 41,121 solar PV and 845 solar thermal systems registered and eligible to create SRECs in the PJM Generation Attribute Tracking System (GATS). Of these, 273 (up 8 projects since December and representing 0.65% of the total number of projects installed) have a nameplate capacity of 1 megawatt or greater, but account for 43.3% of the overall capacity registered. Twenty-nine of these projects have a nameplate capacity of 5 MW or greater (no change since our last update). New Jersey continues to host most of the larger scale facilities, claiming home to 19 of the 29 facilities, that are equal to or greater than 5 MW. The three largest projects are a 29.1 MW project in MD, followed by a 25.1 MW and a 19.9 MW project, both registered in NJ.
On February 11, 2014, the New Jersey Office of Clean Energy (OCE) announced total installed solar capacity reached 1,201.4 MW; an increase of approximately 16.9 MW over the total capacity reported at the end of December. The average last six month build rate per month, according to the OCE data, is 12.6 MW. Note that this data does not directly tie to GATS registration data because of a lag between NJ Office of Clean Energy certifications and GATS registrations.
As of February 21, 2014, there were 10,337 MA DOER qualified solar projects; 10,161 operational and 176 not operational. Total qualified capacity is 673.9 MW; 415.0 MW of which is operational (up 5 MW from the DOER’s January 2014 report) and 258.9 MW of qualified capacity is not yet operational under the current SREC-I program.
*Note: not operational, qualified projects over 100 kW in size were required to demonstrate that at least 50% of the project’s costs be incurred by 12/31/2013 in order to remain qualified. The latest DOER Solar Carve Out report suggests that at least 22.3 MW of capacity was removed from eligibility for failing to meet the requirements of this deadline. Projects less than 100 kW must be interconnected by the effective date of the SREC-II program or June 30, 2014, whichever is earlier. Whereas projects greater 100 kW in capacity must have submitted application paperwork and met certain requirements by July 5, 2013. For more information refer to our blog posts covering the current SREC program.
The tables above demonstrate the capacity breakout by state. Note, that for all PJM GATS registered projects, each state includes all projects certified to sell into that state. State RPS programs that allow for systems sited in other states to participate have been broken up by systems sited in-state and out-of-state. Additional detail has been provided to demonstrate the total capacity of systems only certified for one specific state market versus being certified for multiple state markets. For example, PA includes projects only certified to sell into the PA SREC market, broken out by in-state and out-of-state systems, as well as projects that are also certified to sell into PA and Other State markets broken out by in state and out of state systems (i.e. OH, DC, MD, DE, NJ). PA Out-of-State includes systems sited in states with their own state SREC market (i.e. DE) as well as systems sited in states that have no SREC market (i.e. VA). Also, it is important to note that the Current Capacity represents the total megawatts eligible to produce and sell SRECs as of the noted date, while the Estimated Required Capacity – Current and Next Reporting Year represents the estimated number of MW that need to be online on average throughout the reporting period to meet the RPS requirement within each state with only that particular compliance period vintage. For example, New Jersey needed approximately 496.7 MW online for the entire 2013 reporting year to meet the RPS requirement with 2013 vintage SRECs only. SRECs still available from prior eligible periods can also impact the Solar RPS requirements. Additionally, the data presented above does not include projects that are in the pipeline or currently going through the registration process in each state program. This data represents specifically the projects that have been approved for the corresponding state SREC markets as of the dates noted.
Note: SREC requirements for markets without fixed SREC targets have been forecast based on EIA Report “Retail Sales of Electricity by State by Provider” updated 10/1/12. Projected SRECs required utilizes the most recent EIA electricity data applying an average 1.5% growth rate per forecast year. The state’s RPS Solar requirement is then multiplied by forecast total electricity sales to arrive at projected SRECs required. Projected capacity required is based on a factor of 1,200 MWh in PJM states and 1,130 MWh in MA, generated per MW of installed capacity per year.
TweetSRECTrade’s February 2014 SREC Auction closed on 2/5/14. Below are the clearing prices by vintage across the SRECs transacted in the auction.
| SREC Prices | SREC Vintage Year | |||
| State | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
| Delaware | N/A | $40.00 | $42.00 | N/A |
| Maryland | N/A | $130.00 | $150.00 | N/A |
| Massachusetts | N/A | N/A | $245.00 | N/A |
| New Jersey | N/A | $160.01 | $169.00 | $169.00 |
| Ohio Sited | N/A | $60.00 | $61.00 | N/A |
| Ohio Adjacent | $48.01 | $50.01 | $58.00 | N/A |
| Pennsylvania | N/A | $57.00 | $57.00 | $60.00 |
| Washington, DC | $480.00 | $480.00 | $480.00 | N/A |
The next SRECTrade auction for the PJM and MA SREC markets closes on Tuesday, March 4th at 5 p.m. ET.
TweetOn Friday, January 24, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (MA DOER) held a public hearing in Boston. The meeting allowed MA solar stakeholders to provide feedback and comments on the proposed SREC-II regulations. Additionally, the DOER will be accepting written comments on the SREC-II legislation. All written comments are due by this Wednesday, January 29th at 5 p.m. ET. Comments can be submitted electronically to DOER.SREC@state.ma.us or to Michael Judge, via mail to the Department of Energy Resources, 100 Cambridge Street, Suite 1020, Boston, MA 02114.
For an overview of the draft regulations, see our blog post here: DOER Releases Draft of SREC-II Regulations. As it currently stands, it appears the SREC-II program will be put in place as early as the beginning of Q2 2014. We’ll continue to provide more information on the development and implementation of the program as it becomes available.
Tweet