The program administrator for New Mexico’s community solar program released guidance Thursday for waitlisted projects.
The new guidelines follow a petition from several developers who have projects on the waitlist, which led to an order from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission that provided some instructions on the selection of waitlisted projects.
The rules governing the community solar program are set up to ensure that no one developer receives the majority of the capacity from community solar projects. Because of that, the maximum amount that any one developer can be awarded in all of their projects is 20 percent of the 200 megawatt cap.
However, some of the businesses and organizations that have placed bids for community solar projects have waitlisted projects in addition to awarded bids. For some of those developers, if their waitlisted projects are approved, it might bring them above the 20 percent cap.
The new guidelines are in place to ensure that this does not happen.
In the notice to the participants, the program administrator, InClime, informed developers of the criteria that it will use when selecting waitlisted projects.
The guidelines state that projects—both approved and on the waitlist—may not increase in size for any reason, even if it was previously downsized. However, both selected and waitlisted projects may decrease in size if InClime approves. To have a project downsized, the developer needs to email InClime and include the reason for the decreased size as well as information about how the reduced size will impact the project.
Should a project be withdrawn or downsized, the freed-up capacity will be added to the additional capacity available within the investor-owned utility’s service territory where the original project was located. InClime will then start at the top of the waitlist and contact the first project that does not exceed the 20 percent developer cap. If there is not sufficient capacity available to allow the first project on the waitlist to be built at the proposed size, the developer will have the option to downsize. But even if the developer chooses not to downsize, the project will retain its position on the waitlist and InClime will not take further action until additional capacity is freed up.
But if a developer is in a position where they will exceed the 20 percent cap should a waitlisted project be approved, that developer can only have another project selected if it withdraws or downsizes a selected project so that the waitlisted one does not bring them over 20 percent of the state’s capacity. However, developers cannot downsize waitlisted projects to avoid exceeding the cap.
InClime states that when it chooses a project from the waitlist, it will notify the developer of every project that was skipped because of the 20 percent cap.
