A message was received on May 17, 2010 informing SunRock that Sol Systems is temporarily discontinuing its solar thermal SREC program for all states except Washington DC. Sol Systems was the only company accepting SRECs from solar hot water systems from our Ohio customers.
According to their email, there have been significant changes in the solar thermal market. Exelon, a large Mid-West utility, recently imported a 10MW project into the Washington DC SREC market, which is the only market to currently accept solar thermal systems. This Exelon system will produce around 11,000 SRECs annually, which is more than 4 times the total size of the overall market. This means its SRECs will completely overwhelm the demand for SRECs in the DC market.
In new markets like this, a significant oversupply of SRECs will decrease SREC values dramatically. It may be that in the near future out-of-state SRECs will be worth nothing in DC. Because Sol Systems have utility-backed customers, they should be in a good place. Customers working with Sol Systems competitors in the spot markets or who have not backed up their portfolio (and there are many of both) probably are not.
It appears as if the SunRock customers already registered with SolSystems will be unaffected by the discontinuation. We will continue to monitor the situation and to keep you updated.