The Illinois community solar lottery results are in. Did you win?

Yesterday afternoon, the state of Illinois chose – via algorithm – the solar power projects that will receive the solar renewable energy certificates as required by the state’s Long-Term Renewable Resource Procurement Plan.

The results are listed here – and partially below.

Seemingly, all 740 projects – totaling just over 124 MWac – of large distributed generation projects were awarded SREC contracts. These 740 projects were won by 38 unique legal entities, most of which seem to be unique companies. The leading developers awarded projects include:

• Carbon Solutions Group SREC – 17.9 MW
• Solar Star Always Low Prices IL – 16.2 MW
• C2 WM Illinois Holdings – 15 MW
• Clean Energy Design Group – 10.9 MW
• SRECTrade – 9.3 MW
• Novel Energy Solutions – 8.4 MW
• IL-Solar – 6.4 MW

The community solar blocks were a much different story in terms of percentages accepted. Group A saw 34 projects accepted, totaling 63.8 MW – with all but five projects being 2 MW exactly. An additional 452 projects, totaling almost 860 MW were put on a wait list. The 34 projects were submitted by 18 companies, led by a top five who took just over 63%:

• Pivot Energy, dba TCA Microgrid Energy Management – 17.7 MW
• St. Clair Solar – 10.6 MW
• Cypress Creek Renewables – 4 MW
• Forefront Power – 4 MW
• SolarStone Illinois – 4 MW

Group B had 433 projects submitted, totaling 854 MW of projects. Of these, 78 won an award, totaling 151 MW. Of the 78 winners, all but 11 of them were exactly 2 MWac, with the remaining ranging from 900 kW through 1.9 MW. Those 78 awards were spread among 27 companies in total, with the top seven companies taking 55% of total awards – and Cypress Creek coming in as the big winner:

• Cypress Creek Renewables – 29 MW
• Borrego Solar Systems – 14 MW
• SRE IL REC Administrator – 8.9 MW
• Nexamp Solar – 8 MW
• OneEnergy Development – 8 MW
• SoCore Energy – 8 MW
• Sunvest New Energy – 8 MW

As noted prior on pv magazine USA articles – and in the below image – the community solar portion of the program was oversubscribed by ten times the allotted volume.

The state developed an algorithm to determine which projects would be accepted into the program. The projects were first selected based upon their “ordinal rank”, with the following logic then applied:

• Group A – Community Solar
  1. Projects that have committed to at least 50% small subscribers (50% of the combined capacity of Blocks 1 and 2)
  2. All remaining unselected projects (50% of the combined capacity of Blocks 1 and 2)
• Group B – Community Solar
  1. Projects that have committed to at least 50% small subscribers (50% of the combined capacity of Blocks 1 and 2)
  2. All remaining unselected projects (50% of the combined capacity of Blocks 1 and 2)