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Brad Bowery to speak at ASES National Solar Conference

Posted April 1st, 2010 by SRECTrade.

SRECTrade CEO Brad Bowery will be speaking at the 39th ASES National Solar Conference May 17-22 in Phoenix, AZ. The National Solar Conference hosted by the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) is America’s longest-running and leading conference on the emerging trends, technology, and opportunities shaping the new energy economy. Featured keynote speakers include Earth Day Founder Denis Hayes, Executive Director of the Bullitt Foundation, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute and Catherine Zoi of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Wednesday, May 19
4:00 to 5:30pm
Solar Renewable Energy Certificate Markets: Status and Emerging Issues
Moderated by: Lori Bird, NREL
This session will explore the status of solar renewable energy certificate (SREC) markets in the U.S. and emerging issues. It will cover the status of both compliance markets for SRECs that have emerged as a result of solar set asides in state renewable energy standards as well as voluntary markets for SRECs. This session will cover issues such as the integration of a potential federal solar REC market into existing markets, best practices in tracking and verifying SRECs for RPS compliance, as well as SREC trading and aggregation.
Presentations Include:
Industry Perspective on U.S. SREC Markets
Fred Zalcman, SunEdison
NJ SREC Program Status
Mike Winka, NJ BPU
Status of Solar Energy Set Asides in State RPS Programs
Charlie Kubert, Clean Energy Group
Verification and Tracking of RECs: Issues and Challenges
Steve Wiese, Clean Energy Associates
Trading in the SREC Markets
Brad Bowery, SRECTrade

As CEO of InClime, LLC, Brad Bowery has taken SRECTrade from a website and a concept to one of the most influential businesses in the growing SREC market. He successfully established the online auction in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and DC, and has laid the groundwork for implementations in Ohio, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Brad also developed and implemented SRECTrade’s installer program, establishing relationships with installers and project developers throughout the region and creating the foundation for the firm’s growth. In his role, he is in regular contact with stakeholders in the various state SREC programs, is heavily involved in the day-to-day developments of the market, and oversees one of the most comprehensive blogs on the SREC markets

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in Phoenix, AZ

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Posted in SRECTrade News |

PJM Region

Posted March 28th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

The PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission organization.  It serves to connect the electricity produced by the various utilities across a region.  In several states, the Renewable Portfolio Standard legislation lets utilities count renewable electricity produced within the PJM region towards meeting the state’s renewable goals.

In Pennsylvania, for example, a resident within the PJM region can apply for certification in the Pennsylvania SREC program.  If your system is convered in this map, you can sell SRECs to PA!

Washington, DC is similar to Pennsylvania in that both allow SRECs from anywhere within the PJM region, however DC will also qualify facilities that are eligible to deliver their electricity into the region. This may include facilities in states that are adjacent to the PJM region such as New York or Wisconsin.

Ohio is another state that allows SRECs from out of state. In that specific case, the utilities are limited to buying 50% from out of state and only from states within the region that are contiguous: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana.

Washington, DC is similar to Pennsylvania in that both allow SRECs from anywhere within the PJM region, however DC will also qualify facilities that are eligible to deliver their electricity into the region.

For these reasons, it is important to know what constitutes the PJM region to determine whether or not you qualify.  Here is a map of the region, along with the retail electricity companies who are served by PJM.

pjm-region

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Posted in Cross-Listing, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, DC, West Virginia |

NC SREC Market Launching Summer 2010

Posted March 17th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

Now that APX has been selected as the platform for the NC-RETS registry to track the creation and transfer of SRECs in the state, we are gearing up for the implementation of the SREC auctions in North Carolina later this year.  The registry should be implemented by July 1, meaning that systems can then begin registering and generating SRECs soon thereafter.  We expect to have our first auction for NC SRECs when the market has had enough time to develop the appropriate supply of SRECs. Specific details on the rules governing the market are still to be finalized.  We anticipate that the market will allow for exporting of SRECs out of NC-RETS and into other trading platforms for compliance outside of North Carolina.  In addition, since NC LSEs will be allowed to count a percentage of their SRECs from out-of-state generators, we expect that there will be an option to import your SRECs from other platforms such as GATS for compliance in the NC-RETS platform.  However, in-state SRECs will likely trade at a premium to out-of-state SRECs.

Many customers will ask us about registering in DC or PA first and selling there for now and then selling into NC.  Our only point of caution is that your facility may be treated as an out-of-state facility if the SRECs are imported from another platform.  In addition, it is unclear if you will be able to rescind registration in another registry at a later date and then re-register in NC. For this reason, we recommend that NC facilities wait to register in-state this summer before exploring opportunities out of state. This recommendation is based on there not being a dependable market in DC or NC to warrant the risk of being excluded from the NC in-state market.

Finally it is still unclear what the value of SRECs will be in NC since the NCUC has not and may not announce any penalty for non-compliance. Until clarity is reached on how the RPS will be enforced, the range of SREC values is undefined.  Currently, we have heard values as low as $70/SREC and in the high $100s on the upper range. Given uncertainty in pricing, it may make sense to enter into a long-term contract at a price in this range, however, that same uncertainty drives the argument behind not entering into a long-term contract, especially if the price is below $100. Given trends we have seen in other emerging SREC markets, prices are more likely to rise above these values than drop lower than some of the prices we hear in North Carolina. The bottom line is that if you are getting $70 an SREC, it is unlikely that you will see the market trade lower than that, especially as more states come online.  Whoever is buying your SRECs at that price will also stand to make a lot of money in the long run.  Our advice would be to hold off if you can until there is a stronger indication in this market of what the pricing will be in the next few years. You want to avoid what happened 3 years ago in New Jersey when solar owners entered into long-term contracts at $150/SREC only to see the price go up as high as $680 in the spot market!

P.S. We have already begun signing up our first North Carolina EasyREC customers!

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Posted in North Carolina |

Delaware SEU to protect SREC market from 10MW Dover project

Posted March 12th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

The planned 10MW project in Dover, Delaware would have flooded the state’s SREC market and made it impossible for Delaware residents to sell their SRECs to Delmarva Power. Thanks to the Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), the Delaware market will be protected from the potential harm that such an influx of SREC supply would cause to the market. The SEU decided today that it would purchase the SRECs from the 10MW facility in Dover to avoid flooding the market for residential and small commercial solar project SRECs. The current plan is to hold the SRECs until 2015 when the market is large enough to support such a supply.

This is great news for market participants in Delaware. Although most sellers will register their facilities out of state in Pennsylvania and DC where higher Alternative Compliance Payments (ACP) lend to higher SREC prices, it is important that Delaware establish its own SREC market to support the growth of the industry in-state without relying on legislation of neighboring states to do so.

On a related note, Delaware’s Governor Jack Markell has proposed the extension of the state RPS by 10 years through 2029, increasing the total requirement from 20% to 30% of electricity for renewables.  In addition to the proposed expansion of the program to include all of Delaware’s electricity suppliers (not just Delmarva Power), this could also be an opportunity to increase the ACP in Delaware.  We will see!

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Posted in Delaware |

California SRECs (TRECs) coming soon!

Posted March 12th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

The California TREC market is here!

Yesterday California passed legislation to allow for a Tradable Renewable Energy Credit (TREC) market. This essentially means that utilities in California can now buy SRECs unbundled from the electricity. Prior to this ruling, any SRECs used to comply with the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard had to be purchased with the electricity itself, i.e. the SRECs had to be bundled with the electricity and sold to the utility together.  The reason behind this ruling is that the utilities are not able to meet the growing requirement from projects sited within their territories and this new rule allows them to get credit for renewable energy produced elsewhere by purchasing the SRECs (or TRECs as the state calls them) from generators outside their territories.  The Alternative Compliance Payment (ACP) will start at $50, creating a cap, but that cap and other restrictions around the use of RECs is planned to be lifted after 2011 after the state has had time to get more comfortable with the program.  In the early stages, this means that TREC values will be significantly lower than values in other states where the Solar ACP (SACP) is anywhere from $250-$700. Currently TRECs include all forms of Renewable Energy, however, it is unclear if there will be a market in the future that places a distinction on Solar RECs, SRECs in the California market place. With this legislation, SRECs carry the same value as any other RECs.

We see this being an important opportunity for generators outside California who are now able to help the state meet its renewable energy goals by purchasing RECs. The RECs must be registered in WREGIS in order to be eligible.  SRECTrade will have more information regarding the online market place for California TRECs soon.

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Posted in California |

Solar Power Finance & Investment Summit, San Diego, CA

Posted February 26th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

SRECTrade will be heading to the Solar Power Finance & Investment Summit in San Diego in March.  We’re excited to attend! Here are the details of the conference:

The Solar Power Finance & Investment Summit has established itself as a major gathering place for the solar power industry’s decision makers—the one deal-making venue where the solar power and financial communities come together year after year to network and conduct business. Previous Summits have been enormous successes, busy with major industry and financial professionals networking and discussing deals. The 2010 Summit is slated for more of the same.

Hear From Leading Solar Power Project Developers, Utilities, Financiers, Investors and Other Industry Players at the Solar Business and Networking Event of the Year!

http://www.infocastinc.com/solar10

Posted in Solar Financing |

New York Facility Rejected by the DC SREC Program

Posted February 24th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

We recently received additional clarification on the rules governing acceptance into the District of Columbia SREC Program. Previously we noted that DC will approve facilities in states adjacent to the PJM region. However, the actual requirements are more specific than that. A facility sited in a state adjacent to the PJM Region must also demonstrate that the electricity produced by the facility can be served into the PJM Region. This will likely be an important distinction for residents of New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee who are hoping to register and sell SRECs in DC.

We are working with the DC Public Service Commission to get clarity on how to determine whether facilities sited in states adjacent to the PJM Region are indeed eligible for the DC SREC program and will provide an update as soon as possible.

Posted in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Tennessee, Washington, DC, Wisconsin |

Pennsylvania SREC Market in 2010

Posted February 19th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

Despite a robust RPS and the threat of non-compliance fines above $550, the Pennsylvania SREC market has been slow to develop. We take a quick look at some of the factors that influence this market and hopefully provide some insight as to why the Pennsylvania SREC demand has been low.

Demand Issues: For starters, the PA RPS is expected to ramp up as described on our Pennsylvania Page. Based on current electricity sales into Pennsylvania, we project the demand for SRECs to be as follows:

According to this projection, approximately 20,000 SRECs need to be purchased in Pennsylvania for generation through May 31, 2010. However, the reality is a bit more complex. Electricity markets are composed of three types of companies: electricity generators who supply the power, electricity transmitters responsible for transmission and electricity distributors responsible for the delivery of the retail electricity. It is important to know that although the distribution companies (EDCs) or retail utilities are most commonly associated with state RPS goals, it is actually the numerous electricity suppliers who are responsible for purchasing the SRECs to meet the RPS. The Pennsylvania electricity market is comprised of 11 Electricity Distribution Companies (EDCs).  Behind each EDC are the many suppliers providing power to them.  When the PA RPS was passed, the suppliers for several EDCs were exempted for the first few years. According to the DSIRE website, these EDCs were exempted because they were under rate freezes or still recovering from costs associated with restructuring. In all, 5 of the 11 EDCs are exempt. The exemption ended this January of 2010 for one of the EDCs and the exemption for the other 4 will expire in January of 2011.  More significantly, these EDCs represent over 85% of the total electricity market exempt through January of 2010 and 70% exempt through January of 2011!  With that said, this changes the outlook for SREC demand in Pennsylvania substantially in 2010 and 2011:

As a result, the actual demand for PA SRECs in the 2009-10 Energy Year drops from nearly 20,000 SRECs to under 5,000 SRECs – 25% of what was initially projected. In 2010-11, the demand drops from an initial projection of 33,000 SRECs down to 21,000 SRECs – about 60% of initial projections!

Procurement Issues: In addition to a decreased demand in the early years of the PA market, the state also has some constraints in place that have created challenges for buyers and sellers to connect in this market. For the first time in history, home and business owners are entering electricity markets as generators. These markets are geared towards large corporations that produce significant amounts of power, and as a result, the approach many companies have taken to procuring SRECs is geared towards large companies (as an aside, this is why GATS is such a cumbersome platform for solar owners). In addition, since most of these companies are heavily regulated, protections are put in place to ensure a competitive process. Unfortunately, these protections are also geared towards large companies.  The end result is that the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) requires buyers to use a competitive RFP process.

Well, the problem is that most solar owners don’t even know what an RFP is, let alone have the requirements in place to be eligible. This explains why most RFPs for SRECs are severely under-prescribed and why in late 2009, PPL successfully petitioned the PUC to lessen the credit requirements necessary to bid in their RFP. Instead of being required to have a credit rating and listing with an accredited credit agency, you now only needed to put up a letter of credit to bid on the opportunity to sell SRECs in minimum bundles of 500!

Fortunately, it seems that the PUC continues to re-evaluate this process and the constraints they have placed on the suppliers.  Most recently, they have proposed a change to their policy to allow suppliers to enter into a restricted volume of bi-lateral contracts that are also restricted in value by the average value of SRECs procured in the adjacent RFPs. You can read the proposal and we encourage you to submit your comments. While this is a step forward, we still believe that this will likely incentivize the same companies bidding on RFPs to just enter into the bi-lateral contracts, squeezing out the rest of the market.  We setup our auction to ensure a competitive process that is accessible to all market participants and hope that future iterations of PUC policy changes will better address the entire SREC market and allow more compliance buyers to enter into auctions like SRECTrade without having to jump through legal hoops in order to do so.

Conclusion: The Pennsylvania SREC market has an extremely promising future and all signs are pointing in the right direction. We believe that this is an iterative process. Looking back at the lead taken by New Jersey, their SREC program has been amended several times and it is now inspiring a prolific SREC market. Pennsylvania will continue to tweak its program until the market truly is more efficient and effective in promoting solar. Until then, we at SRECTrade are doing everything we can to bring buyers to the market, as well as set up other means for selling SRECs for our clients. The great news is that most facilities eligible in Pennsylvania are also likely to be eligible in DC and Ohio where in the short-term, SREC prices will be better. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to contact us.

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Posted in Pennsylvania, SREC Pricing |

Massachusetts SREC Registration Details

Posted February 18th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

Massachusetts DOER is recommending that solar owners utilize aggregators for managing their SRECs.  This is a smart move because it allows them to work with a small number of firms that specialize in managing SRECs rather than build the customer service capability necessary to handle all the questions that would arise if every individual solar owner in Massachusetts were to register themselves.  SRECTrade will be on of a few aggregators, however we do hope to be the best!  Here we will provide some more information on how the SREC registration process will work in Massachusetts:

1. Upon signing up for SRECTrade’s services, we will submit a PV Project Application to the DOER. You can find the most up-to-date registration forms on our EasyREC page.

2. The DOER will plan to process the applications within 30 days and issue a Statement of Qualification upon approval.

3. Once you have been issued a Statement of Qualification, SRECTrade will add your facility to the NEPOOL GIS tracking platform. This is where the SRECs will be created and transacted.

4. As soon as the DOER receives confirmation that your project has been authorized to interconnect by your utility provider, you will be able to begin reporting production data to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s (CEC) Production Tracking System (PTS).  Reporting will be done on a monthly basis and the CEC will upload data to NEPOOL GIS on a quarterly basis after verifying the accuracy of the data by checking for any out of bounds data reported.  The SRECs will then be minted on the following schedule.

Quarter Generated – Date SRECs Minted
January 1st – March 31st: July 15th
April 1st – June 31st: October 15th
July 1st – September 30th: January 15th
October 1st – December 31st: April 15th

5. Since SRECs are all created once a quarter, SRECTrade will host quarterly auctions for Massachusetts SRECs.  The auctions are currently set to close on the following dates:

Tentative Massachusetts SREC Auction Dates
Q1 SRECs – August 6th, 2010
Q2 SRECs – November 5th, 2010
Q3 SRECs – February 4th, 2011
Q4 SRECs – May 6th, 2011

If you or your installer has questions about this process and how SRECTrade can help you, please feel free to give us a call at (877) 466-4606.  Click here for more information on the SREC program in Massachusetts.

Posted in Massachusetts |

New to Solar?

Posted February 15th, 2010 by SRECTrade.

We realize that many visitors of our site are learning about solar for the first time, so we thought we would put up this post by way of an introduction and some guidance on how to navigate our site. A growing number of states are implementing SREC programs. If you are new to solar, here is what you need to know:

1. Understand SRECs: For a deeper understanding of what SRECs are and how the programs work, visit our SREC Program page.

2. Find out where you are eligible to sell your SRECs: Your state may or may not have a program, however your ability to sell your SRECs into other states could have a significant impact on the value of your SRECs. You may be eligible to get your system certified in many state programs, regardless of if your state has one or not. Everyone should check our Cross-Listing post to see the states in which they may be eligible for certification.

3. Get your system installed: SRECTrade works with several installation companies. In addition, you should be able to sign up for the EasyREC service through your installer. If they do not offer the service, then feel free to contact us directly.

4. Enroll with SRECTrade: SRECTrade provides two options. If you sign up for the EasyREC service, we handle everything else including submitting your state certification applications, creating your SREC tracking account and automating the sale of your SRECs in our auction.

If you do not sign up for EasyREC, here are the additional steps:

4a. Get your system certified by your state: Once the system is installed, it is now ready to be certified by your state and any other states in which you are eligible. You can find out more on where you are eligible and how to apply on the Cross-Listing page. Every state handles this process differently, but we recommend beginning the application as soon as possible, before your installation is complete.

4b. Set up your SREC tracking account: Every state or region will use a different system for creating and tracking the SRECs. The Mid-Atlantic states use GATS, North Carolina uses NC-RETS, Massachusetts uses NE-GIS. If you opt to manage your own SRECs, you will need to have a tracking account with one of these registries. Once you have SRECs in that account, you can then post them in our auction.

4c. Create an account online with SRECTrade: This is the simplest step of all. Complete the online form to create your account and when your SRECs are available in your tracking account, log into your SRECTrade account, select the “Orders” link and place an offer to sell your SRECs.

5. Understand the timing: After you initially sign up, it will take a few months before you begin receiving payments. For example, if your system goes online on January 1st, your January generation will be recorded on February 1st. Your first SREC(s) will be actually credited to your account on March 1st. They would then be sold in the March auction, so your first payment would come in late March. After that, payments will come as SRECs are generated. Also note: some systems operate on a quarterly basis, rather than monthly.

As these processes are refined, we will continue to update this post. Please feel free to contact us any time at 877-466-4606 if you have any questions.

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Posted in Delaware, Getting Started, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, SREC Markets, Virginia, Washington, DC, West Virginia |

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