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DOER deputy director Kobi Frangilo outlines SMART 3.0 changes, annual rate-setting and mitigation fees
Summary
Kobi Frangilo of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources summarized SMART 3.0’s shift to annual incentive assessments, new land‑use protections and a mitigation‑fee framework for large ground‑mounted projects, and expanded low‑income and consumer‑protection provisions.
Kobi Frangilo, deputy director of the Renewable and Alternative Energy division at the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, summarized changes to the state’s main solar incentive program and how municipalities can expect to interact with it going forward. “SMART stands for the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target Program,” Frangilo said, and he described SMART 3.0 as a redesign launched to respond to higher interconnection and construction costs.
Frangilo said the program moved away from a declining‑block design and now uses an annual assessment process to set base compensation rates and adders. Under the new cadence, DOER posts draft annual rates in October, accepts public comment, and finalizes rates on December 1 to apply to the following program year. “We now have an annual assessment process to set the incentive rates on an annual basis,” he said, describing a looped schedule that begins January 1 each year.
The deputy director highlighted land‑use safeguards and a mitigation fund that will pay for environmental offsets. He said certain high‑value natural areas are ineligible for SMART incentives, including BioMap core habitats and the top 20% of forest carbon areas, and that large ground‑mounted projects will be scored and may pay mitigation fees scaled to environmental impact. “All of those fees will go into a state fund, to complete mitigation work,” Frangilo said.
Frangilo also described changes intended to boost equity and consumer protections: community shared solar projects must meet minimum low‑income enrollment thresholds and projects serving low‑income customers receive enhanced incentives; DOER added consumer protections for third‑party owned systems to guard against poor contracts and bad sales practices. He noted SMART remains funded through a distributed solar charge applied to ratepayer bills and therefore applies only to projects served by electric distribution companies.
DOER officials said the annual assessment will set capacity blocks, allocation across electric distribution companies, base compensation across project sizes, and adder rates; for 2026 DOER set a 600 MW capacity block for projects under 250 kW. Frangilo said the program will include new adders for large building mounts and raised racking and a strengthened compliance and tracking regime. The next procedural step for municipal participants is to monitor DOER’s posted annual rates and consider how adders or land‑use restrictions affect project site selection and eligibility.
