SRECTrade: Very slow July for Northeastern U.S. solar markets

21 August 2013

SRECTrade (San Francisco, California, U.S.) has released its July 2013 report on solar markets in the Northeastern United States, reporting only 14.6 MW of new projects registered for solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) in the PJM Interconnect region. This is less than a third of the capacity registered in the previous month.

The state of New Jersey made up the large majority of new projects at 11.7 MW, but this represents a sharp fall from the 43.2 MW registered in June. Four other states registered between 400 kW and 1.2 MW during the month, with Washington D.C. registering only 100 kW.

Massachusetts redesigns SREC program

Additionally, there were no new projects registered in Massachusetts during July, as the state exceeded its program cap in June and has undergone a redesign of its its SREC programs.

Projects reported by SRECTrade include both solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal, as some states allow solar thermal installations to receive SRECs. However, PV represents the vast majority of projects and capacity.

Lowest level installed in New Jersey since May 2011

The new 11.7 MW of projects in New Jersey bring the state to 1.08 GW of projects registered for SRECs, however on a monthly basis it is far short of its current year requirement of 497 MW.

The New Jersey Office of Clean Energy has released data on installations that show slightly different numbers, counting more than 23,000 PV plants in the state with a cumulative capacity of 1.11 GW. This includes 11.5 MW installed in July, the lowest amount installed in any month since May 2011.

However, brokerage Flett Exchange LLC (Jersey City, New Jersey) has noted that this low level of development should allow the price of New Jersey solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) to recover.