Most states have laws requiring utilities to produce a percentage of their electricity using renewable sources of energy (or pay a fine to the state). The utility can meet this requirement by buying Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) from solar homeowners. It’s a win-win-win situation! You get money from the utility for putting up solar panels, the utilities don’t need to become experts in adding solar to roofs, and the state gets more solar installations.
Astrum Solar can offer you the best value for your SRECs. That’s because SRECs prices are not fixed but negotiated, and Astrum Solar, as one of the region’s top SREC aggregators and sellers, has the leverage to get the best price for our customers. We are also the only installation company that offers an upfront payment for the value of all your future SRECs, thereby reducing the initial out-of-pocket cost of your installation. Astrum Solar customers have the option of selling their SRECs to Astrum Solar upon purchase of their solar system or over a period of years.
• Reduces the upfront cost of your system
• Easy, one-time transaction
• Not offered by any other solar installation company
• You take no risk of changes made to the SRECs program over the agreement period
In the upfront payment option, Astrum Solar will give you an upfront value for all of the SRECs your system will produce for a period of years as a discount to the system. It’s like winning the $1 Million lottery jackpot and choosing to take $800,000 on year one instead of getting paid $50,000 for the next 20 years.
• Pays out more to you over time
• Smaller payments over a period of years, treated as taxable income
• You receive the benefit if the ACP amount is raised
• You take on the risk that the SRECs program will go away, or that the ACP amount will be reduced
In the yearly payment option, Astrum Solar will send you a payment each year for the value of the credits your system produced that year. The value will likely be higher in the first few years and then will decline over time because the ACP (as defined in the law) decreases over time.
SRECs are paper credits that are worthless to you but are worth a lot to the utility companies. The number of SRECs your home produces is based on the size of your solar system and the determination is not related to the amount of excess electricity you send back to the utility grid. Astrum Solar registers your solar system and sells your SRECs for you to utility companies so they don’t have to pay the state a fine for not having enough solar in their “portfolio.” The fine, called the Alternative Compliance Penalty (ACP) will decline over time because the amount (as defined in the law) decreases over time. Buying and selling SRECs is a market based system, so if there are a lot of SRECs available on the market (if lots of people install solar panels), then the price of SRECs goes down. If there aren’t enough SRECs to fill the requirements of the utility companies, then the price of SRECs will be higher.
When you use our Solar Calculator to get an estimate for a solar installation for your home, it will show you the approximate number of SRECs your system will produce and the prices we can offer you for your SRECs. We also buy the SRECs from generated from systems not installed by Astrum Solar, but the offers are at a lower price and with less flexibility than what we offer to our own installation customers. You can also visit our Astrum SRECs website to learn more.
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