Archive for the ‘Installers’ Category

Congress Passes Extension of Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for Solar

Posted December 18th, 2015 by SRECTrade.

Earlier today, Congress passed the FY 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which includes tax extenders and $1.1 trillion in government funding. The spending package includes a pivotal extension of the federal investment tax credit (ITC) for solar energy. The bill is the result of a bicameral and bipartisan compromise, by which Congressional Democrats pursued the extension of this federal subsidy as partial compensation for lifting the ban on US crude oil exports. At first, Democrats believed that the bill would be a loss for the environment, but Democratic leaders urged their party members to recognize the net benefits of extending support for renewable energy development.

“May the force be with you,” quipped Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), encouraging her fellow Senators to vote in favor of the package just hours after the House passed the bill. The bill passed both chambers of Congress by impressive majorities. The House approved by a 316 to 113 vote, and the Senate approved by a 65 to 33 vote.

While existing law provided the 30% solar ITC through the end of 2016, the extension guarantees 30% through 2019, declining to 26% in 2020 and 22% in 2021. After 2021, the 10% credit for Section 48 (commercial) projects will remain in place, per existing law. However, the bill includes “commence-construction” provisions that allow projects to qualify if they come on-line by the end of 2023. These extensions will help states to meet their Renewable Portfolio Standard and other renewable energy goals by helping project owners offset the cost of investing in renewable energy. The federal ITC, coupled with additional incentives, such as Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), encourages investment in renewable technologies across the country.

The ITC extension will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the solar industry. Experts project that the extension will increase solar installations by 54 percent (compared to a non-extension scenario) and create a 20 GW annual solar market through 2020. The extension is expected to impact utility-scale solar the most, where installations could increase by as much as 73% through 2020. Comparatively, residential installations are expected to experience a 35% growth, and commercial installations are expected to grow by 51%. This anticipated development will spur economic growth and an anticipated incremental investment of $40 billion in the solar industry.

After proposing an extension of the ITC in his 2016 budget earlier this year, the passage of this bill reinforces President Obama’s inaugural commitment to addressing climate change and protecting the planet for future generations. The bill also follows the historic adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, which was made at COP21 in Paris earlier this month. Although the Agreement still needs to be adopted by the U.S. Government, the President is resolute that the Agreement will survive Republican opposition and become law. In a statement following COP21, President Obama said that “this moment can be a turning point for the world[,]” and this bill is certainly a step in the right direction for America’s commitment to the new international goal.

April 23, 2015 Facility Management Introduction and Demo – Webinar Slides and Recording Available

Posted April 24th, 2015 by SRECTrade.

On April 23, 2015, SRECTrade hosted a webinar introducing a new facility management feature for solar installation and development partners. This new feature will help partners more effectively track referred solar facilities from the start of the application process through ongoing SREC sales.

Key features include:

  1. Portfolio overview of all referred systems and their SREC certification status
  2. Robust search engine to easily find clients and system information
  3. Status updates to track systems through the application process
  4. Downloadable reports with system details

For access to the slides please click here: SRECTrade 04/23/15 Facility Management Product Overview. For a video recording of the webinar, click the image below.

This document and recording is protected by copyright laws and contains material proprietary to SRECTrade, Inc. It or any components may not be reproduced, republished, distributed, transmitted, displayed, broadcast or otherwise exploited in any manner without the express prior written permission of SRECTrade, Inc. The receipt or possession of this document does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manufacture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. If consent to use these materials is granted, a link to the current version of this document on the SRECTrade website must be included for reference.

SRECTrade Illinois Procurement Program Intro Webinar

Posted March 30th, 2015 by SRECTrade.

SRECTrade will be hosting a webinar on April 7th 2015 at 1:00 PM Central (2:00 PM Eastern) for installers and system owners interested in participating in the upcoming Illinois Supplemental Photovoltaic Procurement Program. The webinar will cover the basic rules of the program, registering a system with SRECTrade, and submitting a bid for the upcoming solicitation.

To register click here

We encourage solar installers active in the state of Illinois to join us to learn how existing and future clients can participate in the Supplemental Photovoltaic Procurement Program. If unable to participate in the webinar, a recording will be made available afterwards.

MA Solar Development Slow Down Likely as Net Metering Caps are Hit

Posted March 22nd, 2015 by SRECTrade.

This blog post is based on the post available at www.solarisworking.org.

In mid-March 2015, the net metering cap for public projects was hit in the National Grid territory (see red box in chart below). The Commonwealth’s legislatively-mandated net metering caps are based on each utility’s historical peak megawatt energy demand. Effective November 4, 2014  net metering caps were set at 4% for “private” projects and 5% for “public” projects of each utility’s historical peak demand, out of line with the state’s 1600 MW solar target. Representing 45% of total net metering capacity in Massachusetts, National Grid also services a region of Massachusetts where it is easier and less expensive for developers to find suitable sites for solar, but Unitil and NGrid-Nantucket are not far behind in hitting the caps in either the private or public sector. The outlier is the NStar (now EverSource) territory, where it is more difficult and more expensive to find suitable sites for solar.

As the caps across the state’s utilities are hit, new solar projects will no longer be eligible to earn retail credit for the excess power returned to the grid. Instead, they will be credited for any excess power at roughly a third of the retail rate. This decreased benefit would render many solar projects financially unviable. Although residential systems 10 kW or less and many commercial systems 25 kW or less are exempt from net metering caps, community shared solar and larger solar projects are not. As a result, development activity for these projects is expected to come to a halt unless the legislature raises the caps. Several bills have been filed this year to address the need to raise net metering caps in order to meet the Commonwealth’s 1600 MW solar target, and the future of the Commonwealth’s solar industry hangs in the balance as the Legislature reviews the bills on its table.

03202015 caps

Source: Massachusetts System of Assurance of Net Metering Eligibility. The data provided below reflects the best available estimate at the time of access of capacity (kW) interconnected, reserved, and pending that is receiving, or eligible to receive, net metering services. The accuracy of this data set is limited as adjustments to outstanding Applications for Cap Allocation may occur at any time. Data and aggregate figures included in this report should be used for informative purposes only. Verified updates provided in the Application Activity and Remaining Capacity Report will continue to be available on a weekly basis, each Wednesday. Posted 3/20/2014.

 

If you want to voice your support to raise the net metering caps, here’s what you can do:

  • Tell Governor Baker to support solar in Massachusetts.
  • E-mail or call your state legislators and ask them to raise net metering caps and to support the continuation of the successful SREC program in Massachusetts.
  • Find out who your elected officials are here.
  • Look up and track legislation here.

 

Visit The Official Website of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to learn more about net metering.

 

Distributed Solar East Finance & Investment Summit (June 8-10, 2011)

Posted April 25th, 2011 by SRECTrade.

Given the relevance of SRECs in financing solar, SRECTrade has been involved with the Distributed Solar Finance & Investment Summit for the past few years and will be attending Distributed Solar East this summer in New Jersey. The event runs June 8th-10th, 2011 in Newark, NJ and is one of the best opportunities to network with a variety of stakeholders in the solar financing world.

For more information or to register, visit the event’s website.

DistSolar11_800x180

Mountain View Solar & Wind to have Installation Aired on BBC

Posted June 22nd, 2010 by SRECTrade.

BBC world news is scheduled to feature the installation of solar panels on a home in Morgan County on BBC World News America’s 7 p.m. broadcast tonight. The piece was filmed on Thursday at the home of Dr. Donald and Selma Straus. The panels for the installation were provided by Mountain View Solar & Wind LLC, the largest solar and wind energy system installer in West Virginia. MVSW installs for both private homes, and for businesses, and hopes to use the publicity from the showing to get the word out about home and community-based renewable energy.

We are excited to see our partners at Mountain View Solar & Wind receive this recognition for their strong efforts in developing the solar industry in West Virginia. MVWS has been a pioneering force for solar in the state, helping their customers sell into the Washington DC and Pennsylvania platforms.

For more information on this story, see here, and be sure to tune in tonight to BBC World News America at 7:00 to see!


Giving thanks!

Posted November 25th, 2009 by SRECTrade.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’d like to thank a couple folks who have recently written about our services.

Dave is a new solar owner from New Jersey who has chronicled his experience going solar in his blog at solarpowr.blogspot.com.  In writing about his journey to go solar, Dave has shed a great deal of light on the entire process.  He’s been an advocate for our services and we are excited to get him started!

One of the the things we love about our business is the role we play in enabling solar.  Matt of PIMBY Energy, LLC (i.e. Power-In-My-Back-Yard) recently signed up with us and sold his first SRECs in the PA market.  He also wrote about his first experience selling SRECs. The exciting part of this news is that Matt is an installer in West Virginia, a state without an SREC program! Because he is in the PJM region, his SRECs are eligible for registration in PA, OH and potentially DC. Since Matt was registered in PA, his SRECs were sold in our November PA SREC auction. If you are in West Virginia or Virginia, we encourage you to reach out to PIMBY to find out more.

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you have a wonderful holiday.

EasyREC service update

Posted July 27th, 2009 by SRECTrade.

Clients who choose to sign up for the EasyREC SREC management service will be able to automate the process of creating and trading their SRECs.  Benefits of the service are listed here:

Completely hands-free: we manage the sale of your SRECs at market prices
Set a minimum: you control the price at which your SRECs are sold
Generator registration service: SRECTrade will register and manage your generating unit in GATS
SREC creation: we handle and monitor the creation of your SRECs
SREC transactions: we process all transactions on your behalf and send you a check
Account management: SRECTrade can provide a detailed account history like this:

sample-account-history1

EasyREC Account History

Selling SRECs online in the monthly auctions is free.  However, the hands-free EasyREC service will be provided at a management fee of 3% of the transaction price.  This fee will cover the administrative costs involved with implementing the service on behalf of our EasyREC clients.  The fee is taken out when payments are made to sellers.  So if SRECs sell for $500, SRECTrade will send EasyREC clients $485.

Hello SREC traders!

Posted March 30th, 2009 by SRECTrade.

This is the first of what we hope will be many posts focused on the solar credit market.  SRECTrade has now been operating our online exchange in New Jersey for nine months.  Since then, we’ve seen the actual value received by solar owners for their credits rise considerably.  More importantly, the rest of the market seems to be catching up as the quotes our clients are hearing from brokers and aggregators are on the rise.  To the extent to which our public auctions have influenced this, we have succeeded in what we originally set out to accomplish.

Our approach has been met with a considerable amount of enthusiasm from solar owners in search of ways to get the best value for their SRECs. We’ve captured some of this feedback on our Testimonials page.  Small business owners and individual home owners who have made the choice to go solar have had little guidance about the SREC market.  Questions loomed about how it worked, where to sell these SRECs and how to value them.  With our SREC Program Information page, we set out to describe the SREC program in layman’s terms and give our clients a clear understanding of what influenced SREC pricing.  In addition to that, our auction clearing prices, as determined by supply and demand, have brought a visibility to the market that had not existed before.  The benefits to our clients are clear, but we are also finding that our public pricing model is generating much interest from other traders, investors, universities and even neighboring state governments.

We launched this venture because we believed there was a missing link in the SREC model and our goal remains the same: bring efficiency to an inefficient market, creating and delivering value to the solar generators.  Recently, we came across a blog post by Dave Conifer who was installing a solar system for the first time and writing about it at http://solarpowr.blogspot.com/.  His story really narrowed in on the exact issue that we are trying to address.  While we were encouraged to know that we turned out to be exactly what Dave was looking for, it was a telling reminder that we still have a long way to go in getting the attention of installation companies as an alternative to the brokers they have been recommending.