The bill proposes increases to the RPS, decreases the SACP and alters net metering.   With the passage of this legislation, electric suppliers would supply a determined percentage of retail sales from solar energy, as opposed to the current fixed gigawatt hour requirement.  The legislation also includes a provision to increase the solar requirement by 20% should the market remain oversupplied for a period of 3 years. In order to prevent large systems from crowding out the SREC market, S 1925 includes provisions to the net-metering and interconnection requirements that make it harder for large, utility scale systems to enter the SREC trading arena.

The impetus for an immediate fix to the RPS derives from a crash in SREC prices from over $600/SREC this time last year to a market presently selling SRECs at just over $100.  For a few years, New Jersey’s market remained heated, drawing in over 600 solar developers to the state, generating the rapid development of solar projects.  The growth was so fast that the state satisfied its EY12 obligation of 368MW installed capacity within the first month (June 2011) of the energy year.  Without legislative action that effectively creates a sustainable long-term demand schedule, the New Jersey market risks a flight of developers and investors away from New Jersey and towards more lucrative environments such as New York or Massachusetts.

Earlier this year, a similar bill was introduced to the Senate and failed. S 1925 seems to garner the industry-wide support that the previous legislation (S 2371) failed to earn, as it addresses the concerns put forth by the BPU as well as industry stakeholders.  If this bill fails to pass through committee, the Board of Public Utilities already stated its intentions to move forward with their plans to repair the SREC market.  However, many in the industry believe that only a long-term legislative fix will properly restore the demand and confidence necessary for the New Jersey solar market to regain its status as a secure environment for investment.

The full text of S 1925 can be found here.

Sol Systems will continue to track and report on the progress of S 1925 through the legislative process.

About Sol Systems

Sol Systems is a solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution. With thousands of customers and hundreds of partners throughout the United States, Sol Systems is the largest and oldest SREC aggregator. We provide homeowners, businesses, solar installers, and developers with sophisticated financing solutions that help make solar energy more affordable. Sol Systems also helps energy suppliers and utilities manage and meet their solar RPS requirements efficiently by providing them with access to diverse portfolios of SRECs. For more information, please visit http://www.solsystemscompany.com.

Kevin Collins joins Sol Systems after his second year at American University, where he studies Business Administration with a specialization in Information Systems Technology. Kevin will continue his studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland this upcoming semester.

Before joining Sol Systems, Kevin interned at No Labels, a D.C. based non-profit aimed at promoting bipartisan dialogue and legislation. On campus, he participates in the Kogod 1955 club – a leadership and mentorship program within American University’s business school. Kevin looks forward to expanding his knowledge of sustainable energy development, as well as improving his finance and market research capabilities.

About Sol Systems

Sol Systems is a solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution. With thousands of customers and hundreds of partners throughout the United States, Sol Systems is the largest and oldest SREC aggregator. We provide homeowners, businesses, solar installers, and developers with sophisticated financing solutions that help make solar energy more affordable. Sol Systems also helps energy suppliers and utilitiesmanage and meet their solar RPS requirements efficiently by providing them with access to diverse portfolios of SRECs. For more information, please visit http://www.solsystemscompany.com.

Unfortunately, the nation’s capital loses its commanding lead when pitted against top cities.  California cities and New Jersey counties significantly exceed D.C. in solar density.  Data from the California Solar Initiative revealed that every California city analyzed – except, interestingly, Los Angeles – exceeds D.C.’s solar density, with a high in Bakersfield, CA of 325 kW/mi².  Solar centers San Diego, Berkeley, and San Francisco also outranked D.C.

At least three New Jersey counties outrank D.C., with Hudson County maintaining an undeniable lead over all other cities at 336 kW/mi².  Since the tighter footprint of cities tends to produce higher densities than counties, New Jersey’s dominance is especially noteworthy.  In terms of area, that quantity of solar currently covers somewhere around 0.1% of the county. However, with the exception of New Jersey, D.C. still exceeded all city hotspots in other SREC states.

Surprise contender Gainesville, Florida is the only other East Coast city to challenge D.C., boasting over 80 kW/mi².  The beneficiary of a strong feed-in tariff, Gainesville now has close to 4MW installed – more than the state of Indiana and slightly less than Michigan. Los Angeles may see the next big jump in installed solar – recently, Los Angeles became the largest city in the U.S. with a feed-in tariff.  It will bring at least 75 MW on line by 2016, with an option for up to 150MW.  As the L.A. program ramps up, we can expect to see the city move up in the rankings. Generally, patterns of commercial solar development all across the United States also reveal the importance of strong incentives in catalyzing good solar projects.

Speaking of strong incentives, the aggressive solar carve-out in the D.C. Renewables Portfolio Standard will drastically expand solar in the District through 2023.  What will solar density in D.C. look like at the conclusion of this massive push?  In the year 2023, D.C. is required to supply 2.5% of its energy from solar sourced within the District.  Based on projected energy use in that year as determined by 2008 Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on retail electricity usage, the final total will be 332 MW in 2023.  In terms of density, that comes to a whopping 5,407 kW/mi².  Even if we reach just 80% compliance, that figure is still 4,326 kW/mi² – nearly thirteen times more concentrated than density leader Hudson County, NJ.  Of course other cities will continue to increase their solar density well into the future, especially where strong incentives are in play – but in a future where all rooftops have solar, everyone wins.

A note on the data: Installed capacity data was taken from the NREL OpenPV Project, California Solar Initiative and from PJM-EIS GATS reporting. The NREL OpenPV Project relies on open-source data and user contributions to form its database. This data is tentative and imperfect, but still proves useful as a ranking mechanism. Until accurate 2011 data is compiled and released for further analysis, we look to this comparison as a strong indicator of D.C.’s strength as a solar market compared to the most competitive areas in the county. GATS data, not available in all states, was substituted when it was higher than the NREL data, giving what we believe is a more accurate picture of total installed capacity. In the rankings, a distinction is made between cities and counties. County data is used where city-level data is unavailable, or the city and county perimeters are approximately identical. Generally counties yield lower solar densities than cities.

About Sol Systems Sol Systems is a solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution. With thousands of customers and hundreds of partners throughout the United States, Sol Systems is the largest and oldest SREC aggregator. We provide homeowners, businesses, solar installers, and developers with sophisticated financing solutions that help make solar energy more affordable. Sol Systems also helps energy suppliers and utilities manage and meet their solar RPS requirements efficiently by providing them with access to diverse portfolios of SRECs. For more information, please visit http://www.solsystemscompany.com. In addition, Sol Systems recently launched Sol Market, a transaction-driven ecosystem for the solar industry that catalyzes investment in solar energy by transforming how solar projects are financed.  SolMarket provides investors and developers with the tools they need to efficiently originate, evaluate, finance, and construct renewable energy projects.  SolMarket has over $1.9 billion in committed partnership funds seeking qualified solar projects and hundreds of users from the solar community.  SolMarket is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sol Systems, the country’s oldest and largest SREC aggregator.  For more information, please visit www.solmarket.com.

“Finding investors who are comfortable with the technology, off-taker, and other project-related tasks can be a daunting task…Fortunately, new tools enable investors and developers to find each other more quickly and at lower costs…SolMarket facilitates transactions among investors, developers and engineers in the solar community through a streamlined origination and finance process. SolMarket also provides standardized documents, modeling software, an automated financial pro forma, and a mechanism to manage all your contracts and other documents across multiple projects.”

In addition to SolMarket, Sol Systems also recently launched Sol SREC Analytics, an innovative SREC price forecasting tool designed to provide a standardized benchmark for the solar industry when transacting in the SREC space

To read the full article on renewable energy project finance please click here.

About Sol Market

SolMarket is a transaction-driven ecosystem for the solar industry that catalyzes investment in solar energy by transforming how solar projects are financed.  SolMarket provides investors and developers with the tools they need to efficiently originate, evaluate, finance, and construct renewable energy projects.  SolMarket has over $1.9 billion in committed partnership funds seeking qualified solar projects and hundreds of users from the solar community.  SolMarket is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sol Systems, the country’s oldest and largest SREC aggregator.  For more information, please visit www.solmarket.com.

Yuri Horwitz, CEO, and George Ashton, VP and CFO, of Sol Systems recently attended and presented at the Distributed Solar East Conference in April.

Yuri served as a panel member for the discussion on “Distributed Solar Developers/Aggregators’ Perspectives on Managing and Financing Company Growth.” This panel discussed strategies developers and aggregators are adopting to drive value and provide long-term assets to project owners. Yuri helped answer questions involving strategies businesses use to increase deal volume and financing, the corporate structure necessary to support these strategies, and the main problems and solutions in financing these projects.

George presented on the panel discussing “SRECs: Policy, Structure and Outlook.” This particular group talked about the developments in the Eastern SREC markets, such as market liquidity, pricing, and market risks.

In early May, George traveled to a conference in San Francisco on financing renewable energy projects through tax equity mechanisms. NOVOGRADAC’s Financing Renewable Energy Conference discussed topics such as the renewable energy tax credit industry, solar beyond 1603 grant, and the landscape of tax-equity investor.

Sol Systems will continue to attend and participate in events that will enable it to provide the most updated and cutting-edge financing mechanisms to homeowners, solar project developers, and solar investors. Please visit SolMarket to learn more.

As the country’s oldest and largest SREC aggregator with over 3,000 customers, Sol Systems has unique access to data in the SREC space and is working to bring much needed transparency to solar stakeholders.  This will be the first webinar of this kind and moving forward, Sol Systems will hold a similar SREC roundup webinar at the end of each quarter.  This webinar will be hosted by George Ashton, Sol Systems’ CFO and Vice President, and Christine Cauley, Sol Systems Director of Portfolio Management.

Space is limited so we encourage you to sign up early.  Please click here to register.

About SolMarket

SolMarket is a transaction-driven ecosystem for the solar industry that catalyzes investment in solar energy by transforming how solar projects are financed.  SolMarket provides investors and developers with the tools they need to efficiently originate, evaluate, finance, and construct renewable energy projects.  SolMarket has over $1.9 billion in committed partnership funds seeking qualified solar projects and hundreds of users from the solar community.  SolMarket is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sol Systems, the country’s oldest and largest SREC aggregator.  For more information, please visit www.solmarket.com.

Description: Renewable energy is the future of our country’s energy infrastructure, and Sol Systems is helping to finance the growth of this critical segment of the energy industry through its SREC aggregation and investment networking services.  We are a young, rapidly growing, and highly profitable company that has already had a significant impact in the renewable energy finance space, and we are looking for a talented, senior-level software engineer to help us continue to shape the industry.  The ideal candidate would be a software development generalist who is comfortable working to develop both backend code using Ruby and Ruby on Rails 3.1 and frontend code using Javascript and HTML5.  Such a candidate would work with our small in-house team to maintain our in-house business process management application, maintain our renewable energy investment networking platform, SolMarket (www.solmarket.com), migrate legacy PHP5 applications to Ruby on Rails, and help develop new applications and infrastructure to support our continued growth.  In exchange for his/her efforts, the chosen engineer will gain familiarity with a wide variety of topics in the rapidly growing renewable energy space, including solar finance mechanisms, renewable energy legislation, financial market modeling, and new product development.  If you think you have these skills and would like to work in an environment where you can have a significant impact in a critical economic space, please apply today.

Requirements:

-        Minimum B.S. Computer Science or equivalent experience

-        Minimum 5 years object-oriented, web-oriented software development experience

-        Minimum 3 years experience Ruby, Rails

-        Experience developing web applications using Ruby on Rails 3.1

-        Experience architecting normalized SQL database schemas (SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL)

-        Experience developing cross-browser application frontends with Javascript, jQuery, CSS, HTML5

-        Experience writing comprehensive unit, functional, and integration tests

-        Excellent problem-solving skills

-        Self-motivated

-        Quality- and Detail-oriented

-        Comfortable working in fast-paced environment

-        Excellent communication skills

-        Comfortable participating in all stages of the software development process, from requirements gathering to deployment

Location:

Washington, DC – Dupont Circle

Compensation:

$90k – $100k, commensurate with experience

Additional Benefits:

-        Health Benefits

-        Dental Benefits

-        401K Plan (starting summer 2012)

-        Opportunity to help guide technology direction at a small, quickly growing company and advance quickly

How to Apply:

Please send a resume and code sample to jobs@solsystemscompany.com with a reference to this ad.  No recruiters please.

Additional Company Information:

Sol Systems is a solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution. With thousands of customers and hundreds of partners throughout the United States, Sol Systems is the largest and oldest SREC aggregator. We provide homeowners, businesses, solar installers, and developers with sophisticated financing solutions that help make solar energy more affordable. Sol Systems also helps energy suppliers and utilities manage and meet their solar RPS requirements efficiently by providing them with access to diverse portfolios of SRECs. For more information about our SREC services, please visit www.solsystemscompany.com.

In addition to SREC services, Sol Systems maintains a rapidly expanding renewable energy networking platform, SolMarket.  Through SolMarket, renewable energy developers can easily advertise their projects to investors with  cumulative investment funds totalling more than $1.6 billion in a secure way.  Additionally, SolMarket provides an accessible, diverse project pipeline totalling more than 160MW to renewable energy investors looking for new renewable energy investment opportunities.  For more information about SolMarket, please visit www.solmarket.com.

Sol Systems is a Washington D.C. based solar energy finance firm that is committed to making solar energy more affordable.  Sol Systems is one of the fastest growing solar businesses in the nation, offering a rewarding experience and a substantial opportunity to the right candidate.

Position

We are looking for a full time Director of Finance to join our growing team and help lead our efforts to develop and expand SolMarket, one of the most innovative and exciting renewable energy finance platforms in the country.  The role will require a combination of modeling expertise, written and verbal communication skills, project management capabilities, business development efforts, negotiation skills, and financial analysis.  Experience in solar project finance, or renewable energy project finance, is required.

Duties and Responsibilities

To include but not limited to:

• Managing and developing the SolMarket investor network, currently a network of around 18 private equity, tax equity, family office, and IPP investors with over $2 billion in aggregate committed capital for solar projects.
• Helping to manage the SolMarket team and their efforts to expand the SolMarket community.
• Working closely with IT professional to design and refine the SolMarket platform to meet the needs of the SolMarket community.
• Designing and utilizing project finance and structured finance models.
• Writing regular market commentaries.
• Speaking at conferences as a solar expert on behalf of Sol Systems.
• Negotiating strategic partnerships with financial entities.
• Conducting internal training sessions for SolMarket staff on different project finance structures.

Required Skills

Ability to:

• Understand, analyze and communicate project finance, with a focus on solar project finance.
• Understand, analyze and communicate the inverted lease, sale lease-back, and partnership structures.
• Communicate effectively with investors, banks, and renewable project developers.
• Grasp project and portfolio risk management.
• Write professionally.
• Model project and portfolio risk in Microsoft Excel.
• Pull project data in Microsoft Access (preferred).

Significant experience (5+ years) in:

• Architecting, building and understanding complex financial models.
• Project finance.
• Analyzing portfolio risk and determining the best path for mitigating those risks.

Start Date

We are looking to move quickly to fill this role, with interviews starting in the beginning of May, with a target start date in June.  Please contact us soon if interested.

Compensation

The position will pay commensurate with experience and the industry.  Sol Systems is a solar finance firm – not an institutional bank, hedge fund, or private equity player.Sol Systems also offers its employees an employee incentive plan, quarterly bonuses, health insurance, paid vacation, monthly “creative” days, Sol field trips, health club membership and a 401K program (summer 2012).

To Apply

Please submit a resume and cover letter (no more than one page each) to jobs@solsystemscompany.com.  Qualified candidates will be subsequently asked for a writing sample and three references.

In this presentation, Yuri Horwitz and Jigar Shah will discuss the benchmarks for successful solar development of commercial and utility-scale solar projects in the United States.  Drawing significant experience in the commercial solar space, as well as data-driven aggregate statistics from SolMarket projects and investor partners, the webinar will highlight key characteristics of both successful and unsuccessful solar projects while providing specific examples.  The presentation will also examine the different types of investors in the solar space currently and what they are looking for when projects come across their desk, as well as what may ultimately doom or save a project.

Yuri Horwitz is the CEO of Sol Systems and developed, and now manages, the $2 billion SolMarket investor network, composed of independent power producers, family offices, tax equity, private equity, and others.  Jigar Shah founded SunEdison, one of the world’s leading solar services company and currently serves as the CEO of the Carbon War Room.  Mr. Shah has also developed and run distributed solar funds and now sits on the board of a number of solar development and financing companies.

Space for this webinar is limited, so we encourage you to register early.  This should be a great event.

Please Click Here to Register

About Sol Systems

Sol Systems is a Washington D.C. based solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution.  To date, Sol Systems has helped over 3,000 customers finance projects ranging in size from 1 kW to multi-megawatts in size.  Sol Systems currently operates throughout the United States and has partnerships in place with hundreds of solar installers and developers.  For more information, please visit www.solsystemscompany.com.

About SolMarket

SolMarket is a transaction-driven ecosystem for the solar industry that catalyzes investment in solar energy by transforming how solar projects are financed.  SolMarket provides investors and developers with the tools they need to efficiently originate, evaluate, finance, and construct renewable energy projects.  SolMarket has over $1.9 billion in committed partnership funds seeking qualified solar projects and hundreds of users from the solar community.  SolMarketis a wholly owned subsidiary of Sol Systems, the country’s oldest and largest SREC aggregator.  For more information, please visit www.solmarket.com.

“The launch of Sol SREC Analytics sets a new standard for the solar industry to reference in SREC transactions,” said George Ashton, CFO of Sol Systems. “It allows developers, EPC providers, investors, and property owners to better understand SREC markets and adjust their development goals or project pricing accordingly. With this new tool, we are giving the industry direct access to powerful market resources, and anticipate it will allow them to find solid footing in often volatile SREC markets.”

Through this tool, Sol Systems hopes to bring greater transparency and knowledge of  SREC markets to solar stakeholders.

To read the full article on Sol SREC Analytics, please click here.

About Sol Systems

Sol Systems is a Washington D.C. based solar energy finance and development firm that was built on the principle that solar energy should be an economically viable energy solution.  To date, Sol Systems has helped over 3,000 customers finance projects ranging in size from 1 kW to multi-megawatts in size.  Sol Systems currently operates throughout the United States and has partnerships in place with hundreds of solar installers and developers.

Sol SREC Analytics is available through SolMarket, Sol Systems’ transaction-driven ecosystem for the solar industry.  SolMarket is focused on reducing solar project finance costs by driving standardization and transparency into the industry.  The SolMarket investor network currently has over $1.9 billion in aggregate committed capital.  For more information, please visit www.srecprices.com.