ASolar Renewable Energy Certificate(SREC) is a way to measure the amount of clean electricity a solar power system produces. Power companies –the utilities like Eversource, National Grid, Western Massachusetts Electric– are required to produce a certain amount of clean energy, or to purchase it from those who build their own solar power system. The current price of an SREC-II (see below for explanation) can be found onSRECTrade.com– they are currently approximately $315/each.
| Month | Solar Radiation (kWh/m2/day) | AC Energy ( kWh ) |
| January | 2.73 | 373 |
| February | 3.67 | 447 |
| March | 4.58 | 602 |
| April | 5.35 | 663 |
| May | 5.78 | 715 |
| June | 6.15 | 716 |
| July | 6.39 | 753 |
| August | 5.95 | 705 |
| September | 4.55 | 533 |
| October | 4 | 504 |
| November | 2.74 | 345 |
| December | 2.28 | 305 |
| Annual | 4.51 | 6,661 |
What this means in plain english: for every kWh you produce, in addition to saving $.18-24/kWh (your price of electricity), you receive a bonus of $.315/kWh because it is clean, locally produced electricity. That means you willreceive $.49-$.55/kWh for the energy produced on your roof.
Currently, Massachusetts is in its second SREC program – known asSRECII. All future systems, until we reach 1600MW of solar power installed, are part of the SRECII program. The original program,SREC I, has sold out. If you’d like to read a more in-depth description visitthis article at GreentechMedia.com.