Program Documents

The Illinois Power Agency and the Program Administrator announce details for the Adjustable Block Program lottery held on April 10, 2019. (2024 notation: See the below section, “Lottery Results, Final Opening Lottery Procedure, Draft Lottery Procedure, and Archived Lottery Timelines” for associated details, documents, and results).

As previously announced, lotteries will be held for the following Groups/categories: Group A – Large Distributed Generation (“DG”), Group A – Community Solar, and Group B – Community Solar.

Event Details

If you cannot attend in person, a toll-free call-in number is available to listen to the proceedings:

888-494-4032; Access Code: 9897235124

Order/Explanation of the Lottery Event

The Lottery Event will start with a brief overview of the lottery process and then lotteries will be conducted in the following order:

1. Group A – Large DG
2. 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
3. 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)

The selection of projects for the lottery will be conducted using the algorithm explained in further detail below. For each lottery, once the algorithm has been run, the results will be displayed with all projects listed by ordinal rank, including indications of projects selected (including specific pricing) and projects placed on the waitlist. A hard copy of the results will be printed, signed, and retained by the IPA (to back up the electronic records).

All Approved Vendors with projects in the lottery will be informed immediately after the lottery event by e-mail of the ordinal rank and selected, or not-selected, status of their project(s). This information will also be displayed on their online dashboard. A public copy of the results will also be posted on the illinoisshines.com website immediately after the lottery event.

For the results of the lottery that will be posted to the program website, each project participating in the lottery will be listed by the project name provided by the Approved Vendor, selection status, the project size, the physical address, the name of the Approved Vendor, any small subscriber commitment status (community solar only), any voluntarily provided utility interconnection queue number, and the random ordinal number assigned to the project.

Algorithm/Project Selection

The algorithm used for the selection of projects is written the programming language PHP and the database language MySQL. The algorithm uses the SQL rand() function seeded by the microsecond time the lottery button was pushed to order the results.

Projects will be selected based upon their ordinal rank. Projects selected up to the combined capacity of Blocks 1 and 2 for the Group/category will receive Block 1 pricing. Projects selected up to the capacity of Block 3 will receive Block 3 pricing. Any projects selected through the allocation of discretionary capacity will receive Block 4 pricing. Additional information on the allocation of discretionary capacity will be announced shortly.

As noted above, for community solar, the lottery is run in two phases, once for projects that have committed to 50% small subscribers for half the capacity available for that Group, and then again for all non-selected projects from the first phase and the remaining projects that did not make a small subscriber commitment.

Contracts for selected projects are subject to approval by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Applications received after February 13

The project application portal will remain open for application submittals. However, for the Group/category combinations for which a lottery is being held, any applications submitted after the 12:00 noon, February 13, 2019 deadline for the lottery will be chronologically placed on the waiting list behind projects submitted to, but not selected in, the lottery. Due to the large number of projects submitted to those Group/category combinations, the waitlist in these Group/category combinations may be significantly long. Please keep this in mind in submitting future applications to these Group/category combinations. Group A and Group B – Small DG both remain open in Block 1, and Group B – Large DG remains open in Block 2 through April 5, 2019 (subject to available capacity).

LOTTERY RESULTS

• See linked documents below in April 10, 2019 Lottery Results Posted section

FINAL OPENING LOTTERY PROCEDURE

• Adjustable Block Program Opening Lottery Procedure
• Adjustable Block Program Lottery Procedure Guidance Document
• Adjustable Block Program Lottery Process Flowchart

*The procedures described in the November 28, 2018 Lottery Procedure document have been updated with some minor clerical corrections and a clarification of the application of the developer cap, as well as an option for projects that receive a Block 3 REC contract as a result of a Block 1 lottery to decline the contract.  The revised language is in the Program Guidebook.

DRAFT LOTTERY PROCEDURE

• Draft Illinois Adjustable Block Program lottery procedure document
• View the stakeholder webinar or download a copy of the presentation or the draft Illinois Adjustable Block Program lottery procedure held on September 17, 2018.
• Review stakeholder comments to the draft lottery procedure that were due September 28, 2018, posted below.
• Adjustable Block Program draft lottery procedure Request for Follow-Up Comments document
• Review follow-up stakeholder comments (October 17, 2018), posted below.

Archived Lottery Timelines (Updated Timeline)

• Adjustable Block Program Lottery & REC Contract Timeline (Lottery Eligible Classes)
• Adjustable Block Program Project & REC Contract Timeline (General)

• Borrego Solar Systems, Inc
• Carbon Solutions Group
• Central Road Energy LLC
• Chapman Energy Strategies
• City of Urbana, IL
• Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA)
• Community Power Group
• Cook County Department of Environment and Sustainability
• County of Kendall, Illinois
• Cypress Creek
• ELPC and Vote Solar
• EnSync Energy Systems
• Environmental Defense Fund
• ForeFront Power
• Fox Metro Water Reclamation District, Board of Trustees and District Manager
• Fox Metro Water Reclamation District, Secretary
• Geronimo Energy
• IGS Solar
• Illinois Association of School Administrators
• Illinois IBEW Renewable Energy Fund
• IL-Solar Inc
• Innovative Power Systems (IPS)
• Joint Solar Parties
• Nexamp
• OneEnergy Development, LLC
• Pivot Energy, f.k.a Microgrid Energy
• Progressive Energy Group
• SGC Power
• Sierra Club Illinois
• Simpleray
• Summit Ridge Energy
• SunVest New Energy LLC
• Trajectory Energy Partners
• United States Solar Corporation

• Borrego Solar
• Carbon Solutions Group
• Central Road Energy
• Clearway Energy Group
• Coalition for Community Solar Access
• Community Energy Solar
• Community Power Group
• Cypress Creek Comments
• ELPC and Vote Solar
• Environmental Defense Fund
• ForeFront Power
• Geronimo Energy
• GreenKey Solar
• IGS
• IPS Solar
• Joint Solar Parties
• Nexamp
• Novel Energy Solutions
• OneEnergy Development
• Ruyle Mechanical Services, Inc.
• Shine Development Partners
• SolAmerica Energy
• Solar Micronics
• SolarStone
• SunVest
• Summit Ridge
• Trajectory Energy Partners
• United States Solar Corporation

The lottery for Group A – Large Distributed Generation (“DG”), Group A – Community Solar, and Group B – Community Solar projects was held on April 10, 2019.

The lottery for Group A – Large Distributed Generation (“DG”), Group A – Community Solar, and Group B – Community Solar projects was held on April 10, 2019. The results of the lottery can viewed by clicking the links below:

Group A – Large Distributed Generation (“DG”) Results PDF

Group A – Large Distributed Generation (“DG”) Results Excel Download

Group A – Corrected Community Solar Results PDF

Group A – Corrected Community Solar Results Excel Download

Group A – Original Community Solar Results PDF

Group A – Original Community Solar Results Excel Download

Group B – Community Solar Results PDF

Group B – Community Solar Results Excel Download

The lottery was conducted using an algorithm that is explained in detail in the “Adjustable Block Program Lottery Event Details” section above. The reports above list all projects submitted to the lottery by ordinal rank with an indication of whether or not the project was selected or placed on the waitlist. If a project was selected the report will indicate which Block the project was accepted into. Each project is listed by the project name provided by the Approved Vendor, the project size, the physical address, the name of the Approved Vendor, any small subscriber commitment status (community solar only), and any voluntarily provided utility interconnection queue number.  A copy of the presentation given at the lottery can be found here.

On April 12, 2019,  the IPA issued Clarification Regarding Application of the Developer Cap in the lottery.