How to verify that a renewable-energy project is operational

The fastest way to verify that a renewable-energy project is operational is to look for it in a record published by someone other than its backer. In the US, start with the Energy Information Administration's monthly generator file. Its September 2026 edition lists 122,225 MW of solar as planned, and 62% of that hasn't started construction.

Another 29% is under construction, and 9% is finished but not yet in commercial operation. A fund could call any of it a project it backs. So when a vendor tells you it supports clean energy, ask which stage each project has reached and what proves it.

For whether the impact numbers hold up, see how to assess a community solar impact claim. For the vendor's phrasing, see the climate-impact claim checklist.

The evidence table: what proves each stage

Read across each row: the public record, the document to ask for, and what that evidence leaves open.

If you only have time for two rows, do the last two. A project that clears both is built and producing, and most of the earlier paperwork stops mattering.

How to run the check on one project

Run this per project. A portfolio total can't be looked up anywhere, so the first request does most of the sorting.

1. Get the project's legal owner, site location and capacity. Add its EIA plant code or registry ID if it has one. If a vendor has no project names to give you, stop there and write that down.
2. Look it up. EIA lists each plant under a legal entity, often an LLC with a different name from the one in the brochure, so search by county and capacity too.
3. Compare the stage you find with the stage the vendor claims. The one to catch is a project in EIA's planned tab that's described in the present tense.
4. Ask for documents where the public record stops, starting with the commercial operation document and the meter data.

A capacity gap can be innocent. Solar gets quoted in both AC and DC: Topaz, below, is 585.9 MW on EIA's nameplate field and 752.1 MW on its DC field. Ask which one the vendor means before reading anything into a mismatch.

Start with EIA's generator files

Form 860M gives you a project's status, and Form 923 gives you its output.

How to read a project's status in EIA's file

The 860M workbook has separate tabs for operating, planned, retired, and canceled or postponed generators. The Form 860 instructions define every status. The one you want, OP, means "in service (commercial operation) and producing some electricity." The operating tab also holds units marked out of service, so check the status column along with the tab name.

What a good record looks like: Topaz Solar Farm

Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obispo County, California, is an easy example. The 860M file shows plant ID 57695, entity Topaz Solar Farms LLC, and five generators totaling 585.9 MW, all marked OP, with operating dates from April 2013 to November 2014.

Take that plant ID to Form 923 and you get output: 1,018,564 MWh of net generation in 2025, peaking at 127,760 MWh in July. February came in at 41,228 MWh, about half of January's 84,418, and EIA doesn't say why. So the file tells you the plant ran and which months to ask the owner about.

If the plant's output looks low for its size, the capacity factor test in our community solar guide is the next step.

Where EIA stops

Size is the big gap. EIA covers grid-connected plants with a total nameplate capacity of 1 MW or more. Its own file warns that excluding smaller facilities "may represent a significant portion of capacity for some technologies such as solar photovoltaic generation."

The plant's operator supplies most of what's in these files, so a status is largely what the operator told EIA, and EIA says it sometimes publishes data before it's fully verified. The data covers the US and Puerto Rico only.

Form 923 lags, too, and by how much depends on the plant. About 1,200 of the roughly 7,200 solar plants in the 2025 file report monthly, and EIA's latest file has them through August 2026.

The rest wait for the annual data: final 2025 came out on September 14, 2026, and EIA lists September 2027 for final 2026. EIA also mentions an unvalidated early release, with no date. If a project switched on this year and isn't a monthly reporter, you need meter data from the owner.

Interconnection agreement vs permission to operate

An interconnection agreement only promises a connection. Permission to operate is the utility's sign-off that the project can run.

Berkeley Lab's Queued Up 2026 report puts numbers on the gap. Of the capacity that signed interconnection agreements from 2000 to 2022, 43% was operating by the end of 2025 and 41% had withdrawn.

The report covers all generation types connected at transmission level, so these aren't solar-only numbers, and distribution-connected and behind-the-meter systems aren't in them.

The best description of permission to operate comes from WREGIS, the Western certificate registry, which requires it from every generator. It's issued by a utility or balancing authority and gives "final, non-conditional approval for the generator to interconnect and produce commercial energy." WREGIS adds that it "is not issued by the generator owner or the installer." We'd hold a vendor to the same standard.

Certificate registries show registration, and sometimes output

Certificate registries' public generator lists work well as a cross-check. The WREGIS active generators report gives a commenced operation date, nameplate capacity and approval date. The PJM GATS generator report gives nameplate and date online.

Neither list has a megawatt-hours field, and "active" in WREGIS only means registered and eligible to create certificates. To see output, ask the owner for a registry statement of certificates issued.

A missing entry means little, because a project only shows up if its owner wants certificates. Who holds those certificates afterward is a separate question, covered in how to evaluate transaction-funded climate benefits.

FERC qualifying-facility filings are self-reported

Some US projects above 1 MW file FERC Form 556 to claim qualifying-facility status, and you can search the dockets in FERC eLibrary. Filings are useful for ownership, location and capacity, but weak evidence that anything is running. A filed copy of the form says "the Commission does not review a notice of self-certification to verify compliance," and it lets an applicant file for a facility "expected to be installed by" a future date.

Projects these records won't show you

Small projects and projects abroad mostly fall outside these records, so expect to lean on documents.

Under 1 MW

A plant below 1 MW is outside EIA's generator files and exempt from FERC's form. Registries can go lower if the owner uses one: PJM GATS lists household systems. Some states publish data too. California DG Stats covers projects interconnected in the PG&E, SCE and SDG&E territories, with one row per site. It's built for counting by city or ZIP code, so you may not be able to find a named project in it.

That leaves the utility's permission to operate, a meter or bill history, and a dated site visit or photos. For a school or clinic rooftop, ask the host too. They know whether the panels are on and what their bill did.

Outside the US

We couldn't find an official global register, so go country by country, starting with the national regulator or grid operator. Global Energy Monitor's Global Solar Power Tracker is a good first look, with facility-level data on utility-scale projects of 1 MW or more worldwide. Treat an entry as a lead to check locally.

• Germany: the regulator's core energy market data register is public and shows a commissioning date and operating status for each unit, solar included.
• UK: the Renewable Energy Planning Database tracks projects over 150 kW. The government notes the data comes mostly from the web and developers, so it can be incomplete.
• Countries using I-REC: the 2015 I-REC guide says production data must be audited by a third party before certificates are issued, and part of each facility's details appears in the registry's public reports. This only helps if the owner issues I-RECs.

What to ask for in writing

This is the request we'd send, and it works for a vendor or a fund:

"For each project you count as operating, please send the legal owner, site location and capacity (AC or DC), the EIA plant code or registry ID if there is one, the commercial operation or permission-to-operate document from the utility or grid operator, and the last 12 months of revenue-meter or settlement data."

A good answer may still have gaps, especially at small sites. A vendor who says which projects have which evidence is telling you more than one who sends a single portfolio total.

What you can and can't check on Dyme

Run this on us and you'd start at our results page, which reports 5.5 MW of solar built and operating, with 20 MW more in the pipeline. In how we calculate our impact, built and operating means the panels exist, are connected and are generating. The 5.5 MW is the full size of the projects we helped fund, and our figures haven't been independently audited.

Those pages give portfolio totals. They don't list site names, commissioning dates, permission-to-operate documents or meter readings, so they won't get you through the last two rows of the table. We don't use renewable energy certificates, so don't expect a certificate statement from us. If you need those documents for your own review, you can request them from us.