As stated on page 11 of the Project Selection Protocol, in the circumstance where the Protocol is triggered and then the final selected project within a sub-program’s selection stage (e.g. the Environmental Justice Communities selection stage) has a total incentive value that exceeds the remaining annual sub-program budget, “that Approved Vendor would have the option to 1) reduce the project size to align with the remaining budget, 2) accept the budget available, or 3) forgo incentives.” The Agency and Program Administrator wish to clarify several aspects of this procedure for only the 2018-2019 Project Selection Protocol.

Within each sub-program, and for each selection stage, the annual Renewable Energy Resources Fund (RERF) budget is allocated first to selected projects, and then the 2018-2019 utility budget is allocated to selected projects. (Per Section 8.4.5 of the Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan, a single project must be contracted under the Program either with the Illinois Power Agency as counterparty or with a utility as counterparty, but not both.) The procedure described at page 11 of the Protocol will proceed as follows:

1. If a project can fit into the remaining sub-program RERF budget, it will be so allocated.
2. If a project cannot fit into the remaining sub-program RERF budget, the Program Administrator will attempt to allocate it to the remaining sub-program utility budget.
3. If a project cannot fit into either the remaining RERF budget or the remaining utility budget, then if feasible, the Agency will re-allocate unused utility funds from another sub-program (pursuant to Section 8.5 of the Plan), plus the utility funds from the sub-program at issue, to accommodate the project. The sub-program’s utility funds are now closed; this re-allocation step will not happen for any other project in the sub-program.
4. If step 3 is applicable but not possible, the project will be presented with the three resizing options described above (using the largest remaining slice of the two funding sources).
5. The next projects on the rank list will be sequentially chosen, if there is remaining funding in the sub-program, as needed to fill the selection stage’s allocation (e.g. Environmental Justice Communities having at least 25% of the total sub-program budget), using steps #1-4.
6. Steps #1-5 will then be used for the next selection stage (e.g. Low-income Communities) until that stage’s allocation of the entire sub-program budget is filled, if possible.
7. If there are remaining budgeted funds for the sub-program for the final General Prioritization selection stage, then starting from the highest-ranked project, steps #1-5 will be used.

Moving next to the three specific options for the Approved Vendor described on page 11 of the Project Selection Protocol, the Agency and Program Administrator wish to announce some clarifications.

• In the second option (accept the budget available), this means that the Approved Vendor could build the originally-sized project as planned, but divide the total project size into two arrays where one is sized to align with the awarded amount; this array would receive the ILSFA REC contract. The two arrays would need to have separate meters and inverters, as outlined in Section 10.16 of the ILSFA Vendor Manual. The non-contracted array could apply to ILSFA in a future program year, subject to the guidelines on “Expansions” in Section 10.6 of the ILSFA Vendor Manual, but with no special consideration in project selection.
• In the third option, a project that declined the selection for an ILSFA REC contract would remain at the top of the 2018-2019 program year’s waitlist within the sub-program (which would be called on, for example, if another awarded project failed to execute its contract, post collateral, etc. and thus was withdrawn from the program).