We have updated our popular Massachusetts SRECs white paper – you can see it on our web site here Solar RECs Info which is always on the left side of the home page We updated key sections because of recent policy and publicity events .
Late Friday Feb. 5th , the Massachusetts Div. of Energy Resources made a surprising ( to some) announcement that led with the notice that the SRECs II program was oversubscribed. This created a little panic which was fanned into a larger panic from misinformation that showed up in a Boston Globe article on Tuesday Feb . 8th. The Globe quoted a large solar developer as saying the solar industry was “on hold ” . The article inferred the SRECs II incentive had evaporated. The truth is that the capacity of large systems eligible for SRECs II has been oversubscribed. New large systems will be registerd and assigned a slot on a waiting list. It has become apparent that some large system developers in MA ( mostly out of state firms) piled on to register for the SRECs II program even though the projects registered may never get built and many won’t be built until the net metering cap is raised.
But the poorly composed DOER announcement and the Globe report helped rumors spread through the solar industry and to the public that solar was dead in MA.
In fact the DOER announcement had also related how a SRECs II set aside was triggered for the residential solar sector. Had people read for comprehension or were familiar with this complex regulation there was no need for the panic.
However, now a run on the remaining roughly 84 Megawatts worth of SRECs II incentives available to small system projects is on. The residential solar lease and ppa sales people are now really playing hard with their pitches to gullible homeowners. The utility companies are getting swamped this week with half baked and dubious applications for solar interconnections from these companies.
Please read our white paper to get the details on why the SREC incentive programs in MA are not helping create a sustainable market for solar. Lets get to a value of solar incentive rather than SRECs and raise the net metering caps. Why is it so many eastern Massachusetts politicians and utility executives refuse to face the facts or acknowledge the common sense of the real energy experts in the House and Senate ( many from Western Ma and all of the Berkshire delegation) who have been working overtime to foster a solution to the Massachusetts solar crisis?
Our BPVS small system customers under contract for installations in 2016 are all safely eligible for the SRECs II incentive and some are already registered. Our large system customers already knew about the thresholds both for net metering and SRECs II.
Thanks … sincere thanks to all our PV owners and new leads and solar friends who have helped calm the market this week.