In an effort to ensure timely project review and approval, the Program Administrator wishes to clarify procedures for ongoing batch submittal for sub-programs that remain open after the primary submittal window has closed.

The following timeline will be in place for each batch submitted in the Low-Income Distributed Generation or Non-Profit/Public Facilities sub-programs until Sunday, May 31, 2020, or until the annual sub-program budget is exhausted, whichever comes first. If a selected batch’s projects cannot entirely fit within the remaining annual RERF and utility budgets, the Approved Vendor will be given the option to resize some of the batch’s projects downward or to remove some projects from the batch entirely (in this case, the requirement that 75% of the submitted capacity of a batch be reviewed and found eligible would not be applicable if resizing resulted in a selection of projects less than 75% of the initial batch size). Further detail about the first-come, first-served process, regarding (i) the allocation of RERF and utility budgets and (ii) the 25% sub-program carveout for Environmental Justice Communities, can be found on pages 67-68 of the Approved Vendor Manual v2.1.

The following batch review schedule begins upon the submission of a batch in the vendor portal.

• Program Administrator Review Period: 10 business days
• Project Cure Period: 5 business days
• Program Administrator Review Period: 5 business days

An Approved Vendor may elect to withdraw a project at any time prior to the project’s batch being sent to the Illinois Commerce Commission for approval and may resubmit in a new batch. If an Approved Vendor is not able to remedy issues during the Cure Period, the project will be deemed ineligible, and the project will need to be resubmitted in a new batch. Any withdrawn or ineligible project would affect the batch’s eligible project share.[1]

All batches submitted through the vendor portal receive a date and time stamp, indicating the precise time the batch was submitted. This time stamp will be used to determine the order of submission for the purposes of funding based on a “first-come, first-served basis.” It should be noted that any project submitted with blank or placeholder documents in lieu of required materials will be found ineligible.

 

 

[1] Approved Vendor Manual, Section 8: “Only batches that have an aggregate capacity of approved projects representing at least 75% of the submitted batch capacity will be deemed eligible to move forward to project selection and final contract approval.”