Thursday, February 16, 2012

Evaluating the Different SREC Brokers

Funny thing about how these blogs work. If I approve a comment, it flies away to whatever original post it was made to, with no way (that I see) for me to subsequently address it.

I just had a question about whether I'm still satisfied with my choice in SREC brokers, which is SRECTrade. The answer is yes. They're very easy to deal with, everything is completely transparent, the interfaces I use to maintain my account are strong, and I'm convinced that I'm getting as much for my SRECs as I would any place else. Occasionally somebody will reply when I mention a selling price to tell me they got more, but I'm guessing it's more a function of my own bid floor/ceiling settings, etc., than anything else. The fees that SRECTrade is charging per transaction seems minimal and these things are publicly traded, so I can't imagine too much variance.

There are some "higher level" (for lack of a better term) brokers out there that use guaranteed prices to lock SREC owners in for set periods of time. Many installers try to push these on new solar installation owners, most likely because they're getting a commission. At first I scoffed at these because when I was starting out, SRECs were going for a lot more money than these "lock/guarantee" people were offering. Now that SREC prices have dropped, maybe it wasn't such a bad deal after all.

But in sum, I'm happy with my broker and have no plans to change in the near future...