The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) recently issued draft regulations for the second phase of its solar renewable energy certificate program, known as “SREC II.” The aim of the SREC II program is to implement the Commonwealth’s goal to install a total of 1.6 GW of solar in the state by the year 2020.
As DOER previously intimated, the proposed SREC II regulations are designed to foster development of certain preferred market segments, such as rooftops and “brownfield” projects, over the “Managed Growth Sector,” which includes “greenfield” installations, where much of the recent growth in large distributed solar installations has been seen in Massachusetts. To do this, the proposed regulations create an “SREC Factor” that acts as a deflator and reduces the number of SRECs created from a MWh of generation. Preferred projects will receive an SREC Factor of 1.0 (i.e., each MWh produced will be counted toward SREC creation) and disfavored projects, such as those in the Managed Growth Sector, will receive an SREC Factor of 0.7 (i.e., the MWh produced will be deflated by 30%).
The official version of the newly proposed regulations will be published on January 17, 2014. A public hearing on the proposed regulations is scheduled to be held on January 24, 2014, with written comments on the regulations to be submitted by January 29, 2014. DOER will then submit the proposed regulations to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, which has 30 days to comment. Final regulations are expected by the end of March or early April.
A link to the proposed regulations can be found here.