As established in the Modified 2026 Long-Term Plan, specified in section 1.J of the Program Guidebook, and beginning with Program Year 2026-27, a new $5/REC adder will be applied to the REC price for projects submitting into the Equity Eligible Contractor (EEC) Community Solar (CS) subcategory where the EEC Approved Vendor (AV) “self-performs” at least 50% of the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) or development work, as determined by the IPA or Program Administrator. This Adder seeks to recognize the additional cost of development that may be incurred by EEC AVs that work on CS projects and who conduct a substantial portion of the project pre-development and development activities.
After inviting and considering stakeholder feedback from EECs on the applicable tasks, the proposed values in percentages assigned to each task, and their relative weighted value, “Self-Performance” was defined as pre-development activities that occur before the submittal of the Part I application (i.e., permitting, feasibility studies, interconnection application, etc.) and project operations that are executed after Part I application submission but before Part II application submission (i.e., procurement, construction of the system, commissioning, professional services, fulfilling community solar subscriptions, etc.). EEC AV services do not count towards EEC Self-Performance.
To facilitate this process, the Program Administrator developed an EEC CS Self-Performance Adder Evaluation Template that quantifies each task and its related point value. As a part of the Template, AVs must provide a written narrative describing all the pre-development activities performed prior to Part I Application and all the activities to be performed prior to Energization of the project. At the time of Part I submission, AVs requesting the EEC CS Self-Performance REC Adder must respond to the attestation in Appendix H of the Program Guidebook and submit a completed EEC CS Self-Performance Adder Evaluation Template. The template can be found on the EEC hub page on the Program website.
The Agency would like to thank stakeholders who provided feedback on the EEC Self-Performance REC Adder through the feedback request process, as well as at the EEC Roundtable. Feedback received through the feedback request process can also be found at the EEC hub page.
For questions, please contact the Program Administrator at [email protected].
Thank you!
Illinois Shines Program
[email protected]