REC data: how these numbers are made

What each figure means, where it comes from, and - as often - why a field is deliberately empty.

REC classes do not average

A solar carve-out certificate and a bundled Class I REC satisfy different obligations and trade an order of magnitude apart. A single portfolio-wide “average REC price” would describe nothing real, so avgRecPrice is null by design and the per-class table below carries the figures instead.

The n-disclosure rule: every class figure ships with its n, its range, and its contributing states. Where n is 1, the “mean” is one state's price wearing a class label and is marked as such. Coverage widens as price intake lands; it is never widened by estimating.

Price types

Each row carries a priceType so a fixed programme incentive can never render as a market clear: administratively-set incentives (New Jersey's TREC at $152/MWh by segment factor, SREC-II community solar at $80/MWh) are compensation levels, not traded prices. Contracted instruments (ORECs) are procured under long-term contracts and carry no solar compliance ceiling.

Ceilings: what an ACP is and is not

An Alternative Compliance Payment is the statutory penalty a supplier pays per MWh of shortfall - a ceiling on rational REC prices, not a price. 9 of 20 rows carry a cited ACP basis; 4 await a current-year figure that agencies publish only in annual announcement files. Massachusetts' Class I rate, for instance, is set each January 31 at $50/MWh in 2003 dollars adjusted for CPI - the rule is citable today, the exact 2026 number is not.

Project records

33 projects, each carrying between 7 and 9 field-level citations. Tier counts: verified: 33. Capacity, status and commercial-operation dates come from BOEM approvals, developer disclosures and agency records; where no primary states a commercial-operation date - projects still commissioning, for instance - the field stays null and the sourced status line carries the truth instead. Modelled values (capacity factors and the like) are labelled in a modeled object with their method.

Known gaps, stated

• 3 of 20 state rows carry a sourced traded price. The rest are pending intake, not estimated.
• State weighted-average price reports (New Jersey's CWAP, Massachusetts DOER's annual figures) are published as files behind navigation shells and cannot be fetched server-side; they arrive by operator intake.
• Price-reporting-agency assessments are licensed and are never reproduced or approximated here.