Draft Consumer Protection Documents and Draft REC Price Model Released for Feedback

The Illinois Power Agency (IPA) and the Illinois Solar for All (ILSFA) are requesting stakeholder feedback on updates to the Consumer Protection Handbook, the Residential Solar and Non-Profit and Public Facilities and Community Solar Contract Requirements documents, and the Renewable Energy Credit (REC) Price Model for the 2025-2026 program year.

The final REC prices and versions of the Consumer Protection documents will be published by April 18, 45 days before the 2025-2026 program year. As outlined in the final documents, compliance is required by June 1, 2025. The 2024-2025 Consumer Protection Handbook, Residential Solar and Non-Profit and Public Facilities Contract Requirements, and Community Solar Contract Requirements will remain in effect until the new program year commences on June 1, 2025.

Consumer Protection

Stakeholders and other interested parties are invited to submit feedback regarding the proposed updates to the Consumer Protection Handbook, the Residential Solar and Non-Profit and Public Facilities Contract Requirements, and Community Solar Contract Requirements. The IPA will review all submitted comments and release a final version for the 2025-2026 program year by April 18, 2025.

Proposed high-level changes to the Consumer Protection Handbook:

• New requirements in Section I.C related to marketing the Federal Income Tax Credit to residential customers (2 draft options provided for stakeholder feedback) and related to advertising depreciation tax benefits to residential customers
• Requirements in Section V.A related to disclosing information about batteries on Disclosure Forms, providing documents to customers who do not have email accounts, and updating Disclosure Forms if they become outdated or incorrect
• Updating requirement in Section IX that entities provide requested records to the IPA or Program Administrator in five rather than 21 days
• Updates in Chapter XI related to warranty/guarantee requirements and to refer to the Approved Vendor Manual for details on savings requirements

Proposed high-level changes to the Residential Solar and Non-Profit and Public Facilities Contract Requirements and the Community Solar Contract Requirements:

• Updating requirements to apply (as applicable) to loans used to purchase projects or shares in a community solar project, regardless of whether the lender is affiliated with an Approved Vendor
• Requirement that contracts may not prohibit or limit the participant’s ability to make complaints to the Program Administrator
• Updates to language for warranty/guarantee requirements
• Updates to clarify requirements for Energy Sovereignty projects

REC Price Model

The Illinois Power Agency (IPA) has conducted the annual refresh of its REC Pricing Model, in accordance with the 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan.

For this update, the Agency began with the 2024-2025 REC Pricing Model, then incorporated updated inputs to derive the proposed 2025-2026 REC prices for Illinois Shines and Illinois Solar for All. Download the full REC Pricing Model used to calculate these proposed prices.

The Agency seeks stakeholder feedback on the updates to the inputs to the REC Pricing Model and the proposed REC Prices for the 2025-2026 program year. Comments are due by March 26 and should be submitted to IPA.Contactus@illinois.gov.

Responses will be published on the Agency’s website. However, should a commenter seek to designate any portion of its response as confidential, that commenter should provide both public and redacted versions and the Agency will only post the redacted version. Independent of that designation, if the IPA determines that a response contains confidential information that should not be disclosed, it reserves the right to provide its own redactions.

The Agency will review stakeholder feedback and will publish final REC prices for the 2025-2026 program year by April 18, 2025. The underlying methodology used to calculate prices for subsequent program years will be established as a component of the next Long-Term Plan.

For additional information, please refer to the full announcement on the IPA website.