Renewable Energy Certificates: Generate Additional Revenue with your Solar Portfolio

Did you know that your solar projects could be generating more value than you think? Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are creating new monetization opportunities for solar developers, and the time to take advantage of them is now.

The urgency of the energy transition has never been clearer. Today, less than a third of Mexico’s electricity comes from clean sources,  and power generation accounts for a quarter of the country’s emissions. The Mexican grid faces three major challenges: (1) demand is growing faster than supply, (2) transmission infrastructure has critical deficiencies, and (3) there is an urgent need to increase the share of renewable energy. The situation across Latin America is similar. While many countries benefit from cleaner grids due to large hydroelectric plants, phenomena like El Niño can make them less reliable. This is why decarbonizing, decentralizing, and diversifying our energy sources has become one of the greatest challenges of our time. Redirecting financing—historically skewed towards fossil fuels—toward clean, decentralized, and reliable energy infrastructure is essential. But what mechanisms exist to incentivize solar developers to accelerate the energy transition? One key solution lies in Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

Understanding RECs: Your new source of revenue

When you generate 1 MWh of renewable electricity and inject it into the grid, it mixes with energy from other sources. Companies with environmental commitments cannot physically track how much of the electricity they consume comes from clean sources—unless they generate it themselves or purchase it through a power purchase agreement. RECs allow them to claim credit for using renewable energy, even if they haven’t generated it directly.

Historically, certifying RECs has been tedious and expensive, so only large plants have typically undergone the process. At Popular Power, we want to change that by ensuring distributed solar developers can access this market easily and without complications. The REC market in Mexico is also expanding. As of last year, more than 400 companies worldwide were part of RE100, an initiative bringing together corporations committed to using 100% renewable energy. Many of these companies already operate—or are beginning to operate—in Mexico and other Latin American countries, driven by nearshoring. This has led to rising demand and prices for RECs.

If you’re a solar developer, now is the time to enter the market and start monetizing the environmental attributes of your portfolio. With 10 MW of distributed solar capacity, a developer could generate around USD $20,000 per year in additional revenue from RECs. To put that into perspective: this could cover 20% of your operation and maintenance costs!

Unlocking value with Popular Power

Popular Power provides a comprehensive solution to optimize the management of your solar portfolio. With our platform, you can:

• Centralize monitoring of your portfolio in real time

• Automate client reports 

• Improve the performance of your solar plants

  
  

In addition to these operational improvements, we help you easily access the REC market. We simplify the registration and certification process, allowing you to generate additional income in a simple and efficient way. This means you can increase revenue, reduce costs, and focus on what truly matters—growing your solar business.

Every day that your solar projects do not generate RECs, you are leaving money on the table. Contact us today and discover how Popular Power can help you unlock the true potential of your solar portfolio.

We will be present at the first ever I-REC Day México this February 21st 2025, contact stephanie@popularpower.io if you want to meet up!

--

Popular Power is a solar monitoring software solution designed for solar companies operating in the C&I segment. Our hardware-agnostic platform integrates site monitoring into a single interface, providing customers with actionable data and insights on their solar portfolios. Why #GetPopular? Our customers can ensure system uptime (increasing revenue), optimize O&M (cutting costs), and streamline reporting and monitoring (saving time on manual processes).