Sol Systems Customers Can Now Sign-up for Monthly SREC Payments!
Insights |
By Callie Sofis-Scheft
Starting this month, June 2023, Sol Systems’ SREC customers in PJM-GATS markets are eligible for monthly payments! We are excited to expand our service to include monthly payments for our customers and installer partners.
How does a system qualify for monthly payments?
In order to receive monthly payments, customers must sign up for direct deposit through the Sol Systems Customer Dashboard. Customers who do not sign up for direct deposit will receive one check a year in November.
Monthly payments are available to customers with active Sol Annuity, Sol Brokerage, or Sol Profit Share agreements. Sol Upfront payments will continue to be paid within 15 business days after Sol Systems receives full system approval from PJM-GATS or NEPOOL. For Sol Brokerage customers, a generated SREC must still be sold on the spot market by Sol Systems to receive payment.
Massachusetts customers who are signed up for direct deposit will continue to receive quarterly payments due to NEPOOL’s quarterly SREC minting schedule.
What is the new monthly payments schedule?
Monthly payments will be processed by the last business day of each month. As with all electronic payments, it may take a few days for the payment to reach a customer’s bank account depending on the bank. Customers may view their payment statement at any time by logging into their Sol Systems Dashboard.
The following schedule outlines the SREC generation month that coincides with the SREC payment month. Therefore, for the June 2023 payment cycle, SRECs generated in or before April 2023 will be eligible for payment.
What happens if a system does not generate an SREC each month?
If a system does not generate an SREC during a given generation month, a payment will not be provided during the associated SREC payment month. For example, if a system with a Sol Annuity contract generates one SREC in January and one SREC in May, then the customer will receive a payment for one SREC in March and a payment for one SREC in July.
Why has Sol Systems switched to offering monthly payments?
Sol Systems has received feedback from our SREC customers and installer partners that more frequent payments are preferred. We know that SREC revenue can be a critical financial component of the decision to go solar, and we are pleased to provide our customers and partners with more frequent SREC payment options. Furthermore, to reduce the use of paper to print checks, we encourage all customers to enroll in direct deposit.
SOME (So Others Might Eat): Driving Impact through Meaningful Community Engagement
Insights |
By Chris Accou
“Impact through Infrastructure” - While succinct, these words encapsulate Sol Systems’ commitment to driving positive societal impact. They are a call to action – a mission to empower and elevate the communities we serve as part of an equitable transition to a sustainable energy future. This effort is rooted in Sol Systems’ engagement with local leaders and partners to foster an approach to sustainable infrastructure that pairs solar energy projects with long-term investments in ecosystems and communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.
In this edition of our Infrastructure + Impact Spotlight Series, we pay homage to our partner, SOME, an interfaith community-based service organization whose mission is to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness through programs and services that help transform lives of individuals and families, their communities, and the systems and structures that affect them. Each day, SOME strives to restore hope and dignity one person at a time through its integrated “Whole Person Care” approach. What began as a lunch line on the corner of North Capitol and K Street more than 50 years ago has flourished into an esteemed leader for affordable housing, healthcare, rehabilitative services, education, employment training, and food security throughout Washington, D.C.
SOME is actively redefining affordable housing in the District by creating a stable foundation where its residents can explore their potential. SOME provides transitional housing programs for those earning 30% or less of the Family Median Income ($38,700 for a family of four as of 2021) while ensuring that residents progress by teaching them to create budgets, financial goals, and sustainable payment plans. Since opening its first transitional housing program in 1986, SOME now operates a portfolio of over 1,300 affordable housing units for single adults, families, and senior citizens, preparing them for homeownership or market-rate rents through a step-by-step process.
Take the Bonner Family, for example. Their time living in SOME's two-year accelerated housing program helped them make great strides. During the pandemic, with the program's help, the Bonners saved over $14,000 in housing costs and more than $800 in emergency savings, all while paying off their credit card debt and building a strong credit score, allowing them to move into a new home in the District in 2022.
Photo credit: The Bonner Family
This dynamic approach to care is especially critical in a city like Washington, D.C., where in the past two decades, the number of affordable housing units has decreased while the number of high-cost housing units has multiplied. [1] The resulting structural barriers continue to affect low-income residents’ ability to afford safe and healthy housing, food, and utilities, among other necessities.
It is because of these realities that Sol Systems remains committed to supporting community leaders like SOME to fill critical gaps by leveraging the benefits of sustainable infrastructure such as solar energy, energy efficiency and critical home health and safety upgrades to drive positive environmental and community impacts beyond the carbon reduction inherent in clean energy. In the spirit of this partnership, on May 17th, 2022, Sol Systems, FedEx, and SOME announced a special arrangement that spreads the benefits of the Sol Systems-developed 915 kW rooftop community solar project at the FedEx Express Eckington Place facility even further into the District. FedEx is allocating the bill credits generated from the solar installation, along with a supplemental cash donation, to SOME to offset the annual electricity costs at two of its facilities located in Ward 5 – Weinberg House, an affordable housing facility that is home to 28 families and Isaiah House, home to a day program for homeless adults with severe and persistent mental illness. Beyond this immediate impact, reducing the energy burden of these facilities will enhance SOME’s ability to devote additional resources to initiatives that empower its clients to create long-term, sustainable change.
Sol Systems’ commitment to under-resourced communities is a priority shared by the leadership and staff. On April 20th, 2022, we joined SOME to celebrate Earth Day by working on beautification projects at Zagami House – one of SOME’s housing sites where Sol Systems had previously made contributions toward HVAC and energy efficient appliance upgrades. The projects, which included planting of seasonal flowers, assembly of raised garden beds, and mulching of playground areas revitalized Zagami’s grounds for residents to enjoy. Partnering with organizations like SOME shows how meaningful collaboration with communities can help to tackle local challenges and ensure that all communities participate in the clean energy economy. To learn more about how SOME drives impact through meaningful community engagement, please visit SOME’s website at: SOME.org.
Exploring Agrivoltaics: Solar Design and Lettuce Yield in Fresno, California
Insights |
By Justine Perrotti
This article is part of the March 2023 edition of our publication The Sol SOURCE. Click here to read the full publication.
The agricultural and solar industries sometimes compete for land use, but they have recently found ways to work together. Agrivoltaics is the use of land below solar panels for crop fields, allowing a site to produce both food and energy. To better understand how these dual uses interact, we researched how yields for lettuce, a cash crop that can produce in shaded conditions, might benefit from changes to solar panel configuration at a projected growing site near Fresno, California. We found that some configurations are well suited to both agricultural productivity and project returns.
Research Methods
Our team evaluated four system configurations:
a fixed ground-mounted system with one-meter ground clearance;
a fixed elevated system with 3.75-meter ground clearance;
a single-axis tracking ground-mounted system with one-meter ground clearance; and
a single-axis tracking elevated system with 3.75-meter ground clearance.
We measured the effect on lettuce yield of adjustments to ground-clearance height, array height, axis selection, tilt, tracking rotation limit, and backtracking.
Row spacing was set to approximately four meters between panels, allowing lettuce positioning between rows to conform to standard 14-inch spacing, including 14 inches from the system’s standard 20-inch-diameter support piling. The yield was measured under normal and drought conditions to monitor crop response to variable moisture retention. Reduced moisture retention in drought conditions results in greater production when panels are positioned over the lettuce, enhancing yield for ground-mounted panels and elevated arrays.
Using all input parameters, we created 25 plots of subarrays containing 20 rows per subarray and 16 modules per row, occupying a total of seven acres of land. Differences in assumed yield were calculated based on average photosynthesis. System costs were adjusted to reflect increased labor and materials costs of elevating panels on stilts and installing trackers.
Results and Conclusion
Total lettuce output for each system parameter demonstrated that elevating panels is key to increasing lettuce yield. Tracking also increases yield, although to a lesser extent.
The cost-adjusted financial results for each array design showed that the fixed elevated system generated the highest net present value, while the ground-mounted tracking system generated the highest internal rate of return (IRR).The elevated tracking system maximized lettuce yield, generated the highest total income, and generated a greater IRR than both fixed systems. The single-axis tracking array with 3.75-meter ground clearance resulted in the smallest reduction in lettuce yield compared to full-irradiance growing conditions. Importantly, an elevated system design would allow tractors averaging three meters in height to pass under the array, allowing farmers to use typical harvesting techniques. Unelevated ground-mounted systems would require harvesting by hand, necessitating special protective equipment for workers operating near the panels.
Further research into the potential of agrivoltaics is essential to improving land use in the clean-energy economy. More detailed data and citation information are available upon request.
Endnotes
1. Barron-Gafford, Pavao-Zuckerman, Minor, Sutter, Barnett-Moreno, Blackett, Thompson, Dimond, Gerlak, Nabhan, and Macknick (2019), Agrivoltatics provide mutual benefits across the food-energy-water nexus in drylands, Nature Sustainability.
2. Tani, Suguru, Nakashima, and Hayashi (2014), Improvement in lettuce growth by light diffusion under solar panels, Journal of Agricultural Meteorology.
After the Inflation Reduction Act: Solar’s New Horizon
Insights |
By The Sol Systems Editorial Team
This article is part of the March 2023 edition of our publication The Sol SOURCE. Click here to read the full publication.
After the excitement that followed passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), reality is setting back in as we await implementation guidance from the Biden Administration. However, clean energy isn’t the federal government’s only focus—2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) has started to take effect, not to mention the continued war in Ukraine, increasing trade and tensions with China, and a tumultuous U.S. economy made even rockier by the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and ongoing uncertainty about the debt ceiling. Analysts, investors, and state governments are setting new expectations for clean energy deployment as we all dig deeper into the challenges and opportunities ahead.
New Law, New Projections
The IRA’s effect on solar growth projections is unmistakable. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) projects a 69% increase in solar deployment over the next 10 years, which would lead to five times more solar in the ground. 85 GW of new solar manufacturing capacity have been announced since the IRA was signed—an 870% increase. With annual overall investment in renewables set to increase from $64 billion in 2022 to $116 billion in 2031, the U.S. is now projected to cut its economy-wide emissions by more than 50% by 2030.
The End of the Solar Coaster
The unprecedented scale of these projections is largely driven by the new longevity of federal clean energy tax credits under the IRA. For the first time, the ITC and PTC will persist at full value for 10 years—or longer, if emissions from generation aren’t reduced by at least 75% in that time. The longer horizon is intended to encourage sustained investment in clean energy, instead of the too‑familiar boom-and-bust cycles brought on by periodic one- and two-year extensions. Under the IRA, the credits also transition quickly to technology-neutral clean energy credits, aligning with scientists’ and policymakers’ focus on emissions outcomes rather than technological inputs.
States Step Up
While we await federal guidance for implementing novel portions of the new law, state governments are stepping up to make the most of this moment. Encouraged by the new federal attention on clean energy that we saw in 2022, a number of states have passed or are studying 100% clean electricity commitments. As we highlight in our State Markets section, since the IRA was signed, Minnesota and New Jersey have made fresh commitments to 100% clean electricity, marking the first time that more than half of Americans live in jurisdictions that have made this commitment. States are also looking ahead at how they can leverage a clean electricity supply to decarbonize other sectors, such as transportation and building operations. The IRA and IIJA’s significant investment in these harder-to-decarbonize sectors is largely funded through states, making their role particularly important.
New Challenges
Portions of the IRA’s larger and longer-lasting tax credits rely on further federal guidance for their implementation. Because of the limits of the budget reconciliation process under which the IRA was passed, the law itself could not include the specific instructions needed for implementing its novel credit adders and financing options. Rules and definitions related to domestic content, energy communities, credit transferability, and direct pay are left to the IRS and other federal agencies to develop before the credits can be monetized. For example, the IRA incentivizes building clean energy infrastructure in “energy communities,” defined by their proximity to Superfund sites or recently closed coal facilities, or by lost fossil fuel employment. Each of these criteria requires additional information from the IRS to be actionable—defining census tracts, proximity rules, and so forth.
Another key hurdle to fulfilling the promise of the IRA is a challenge facing many industries in 2023—finding enough workers. According to some estimates, more than 100,000 new clean energy jobs have been created in the six months since the IRA took effect. At the same time, the U.S. construction industry was short 413,000 workers as of December, while 764,000 manufacturing sector jobs remained open, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. McKinsey & Company expects a further 550,000 new energy transition jobs by 2030, of which they estimate only up to 10% will be filled by workers leaving the oil and gas industry. Even with the significant support the IRA provides for apprenticeships, this issue remains potentially the most important challenge to achieving the full value of the IRA over the long term.
What Else Is Going on in Solar?
Setting aside the IRA, familiar policy topics remain in focus for the industry. International trade issues are still an important concern, including tariff policy and complications from our ever-evolving relationship with the People’s Republic of China. In the near term, we expect a final determination on the AD/CVD investigation by May 1, 2023, which will establish tariff rates for a substantial portion of solar panel imports. President Biden (D) stayed the effect of this decision through June 2024, although Congress is now considering overturning that critical near-term tariff relief and imposing retroactive tariffs, which would debilitate the industry. Purchasing decisions already stretch past the end of the tariff relief, and we look forward to better pricing certainty as we onshore manufacturing capacity. As we write this, solar panel imports have begun to unstick from the logjam that followed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Trina Solar, for example, noted that more than 900 MW of panels have cleared customs recently with less than one percent detained. This is a significant improvement from the effective freeze we saw after the law took effect last year.
Domestic challenges also remain. At the forefront are ever-worsening interconnection processes, which are hampering many regions’ efforts to connect new renewable generation. In PJM, which serves 14 jurisdictions from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Illinois, grid operators worry that interconnection uncertainties may threaten future reliability. In the near term, the ongoing threats of federal default and bank insolvencies hang over investors and developers alike as the U.S. approaches the federal debt limit, currently estimated to be reached as soon as June. At the local level, an Astroturf campaign threatens to impose overly restrictive siting requirements for solar—if not outright bans—in many counties. Meanwhile, the State of Illinois recently passed a national model for streamlining siting requirements across geographies and technologies.
Infrastructure + Impact Spotlight: Welcome Our New Impact Partners!
Insights |
By Adaora Ifebigh
This article is part of the March 2023 edition of our publication The Sol SOURCE. Click here to read the full publication.
In 2020, we announced our first power purchase and community investment agreement. The agreement was a milestone in our “Infrastructure + Impact” mission, representing a groundbreaking strategy to leverage clean power generation to invest in under-resourced communities and communities disproportionately harmed by climate change. Under that agreement, Sol Systems is charged to craft community-focused clean energy solutions and support local workforce development by partnering with local organizations that are working to address challenges in their communities.
Today, our initiative has grown from five organizations based in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. to 10 organizations serving a variety of rural and urban communities. Like their predecessors in the program, our newest partners are focused on renewable energy, environmental justice, and job creation and training. These partnerships also bring new support to our “Pathway to Solarization” objective, which recognizes the importance of home repairs and energy efficiency upgrades to expanding access to solar, as well as educating and growing the clean energy workforce. Below are a few of the organizations that we have worked with closely over the last year and will continue to work with in the year to come.
Based in Boone, North Carolina, Appalachian Voices envisions an Appalachia with healthy ecosystems and resilient local economies that allow communities to thrive. They work to increase energy efficiency and end harmful fossil-fuel practices (such as mountaintop-removal coal mining), and strive to shift to clean energy sources, including solar and wind power. Sol Systems’ partnership will establish a solar readiness fund. This fund will expand the work of Appalachian Voices’ established solar finance fund, which provides catalytic support to unlock solar investments in coal communities. Specifically, the solar readiness fund targets facilities whose key barrier to solar is poor roof conditions.
Based in Christiansburg, Virginia, Community Housing Partners was founded to perform home repairs for low-income families living in unsafe or unhealthy conditions. As the complexity of home repairs grew, the organization incorporated, received a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) designation and became Virginia’s first provider of federal Weatherization Assistance Program services. Sol Systems’ partnership will support energy efficiency and safety upgrades, improving residents’ quality of life and reducing the energy burden in a low-income apartment community in Pembroke, Virginia.
Based in Washington, D.C., Rebuilding Together DC Alexandria is part of a national network of affiliates working to preserve affordable homeownership, revitalize neighborhoods, and provide critical home-repair services that eliminate health and safety hazards free of charge to those in need. Sol Systems’ partnership will be used to make energy-efficient upgrades to two facilities: an affordable housing facility for homeless veterans and a housing unit for low-income households owned by So Others Might Eat (SOME). SOME is a Washington, D.C. organization and existing partner of Sol Systems working to help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness in the city. SOME is the current beneficiary of a 915 kW community solar installation recently completed for FedEx at a facility in Washington, D.C. FedEx is allotting part of the electricity bill credits generated by the solar installation to offset the yearly electricity costs of two SOME facilities.
Based in Baltimore, Maryland, Climate Access Fund is a green bank whose mission is to reduce the energy burden and carbon footprint of Maryland’s low- and moderate-income (LMI) households by facilitating access to clean community solar projects. Sol Systems’ partnership will support the financing and implementation of a community solar project at the Henderson Hopkins School in East Baltimore, which will reserve 100% of the solar power generated for LMI households in the community. Other community benefits will include solar workforce training and an after-school club for middle school students.
Based in Petersburg, Virginia, Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative was created when four organizations (the Southeast CARE Coalition, Appalachian Voices, the Federal Policy Office of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and New Virginia Majority) saw the need for statewide coordination to support Virginia organizations addressing environmental justice issues. Sol Systems’ partnership will support the organization’s efforts to establish a solar-plus-storage resilience hub and launch workforce development initiatives in Petersburg, a historically under-resourced community in Virginia.
In the year ahead, we will continue to foster relationships with our current community partners while expanding our impact with new ones. Our continuing partnerships deepen the impact we have in D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, while our new partners will allow us to expand our work into new geographical areas, specifically rural Appalachia in Virginia and North Carolina.
