Financing is quickly become necessary for the successful adoption of renewable energy in the United States. If you want to sell geothermal or solar projects, you need to understand finance.
Great Resources
Finance 101 for Renewable Energy Pros
Finance 101 for Solar PV Pros
Mastering Commercial Solar Finance
The Complete Guide to Geothermal Tax Credits
For the fourth part of my interview series with BrightGrid Renewable Energy Finace, I spoke with Tim Slavin, VP of Credit and Operations at BrightGrid. We talked about a solar installer should be asking from their manufacturing partners and how solar installers should select a partner to work with.
The BrightGrid series is for residential solar […]
The above video is part 2 in a 5 part series HeatSpring created with BrightGrid Renewable Energy Finance for solar installers about solar financing and solar leases.
You can watch the full 5 part series “How to User Solar Leases to Grow your Business” here, right now. You can watch the first interview on what residential solar companies need to do to successfully offer a solar lease.
The purpose of the series is extremely simple, the solar lease is becoming required for solar installers looking to sell to mass market clients. However, in order for a solar company to successful offer a solar lease, there is some basic information they must understand.
In part 2, I talked with Mathew Vazzzana and how a residential solar lease works and what installers need to know to sell it’s value.
[…]
The residential, commercial and utility scale solar financing markets are different and have their own dynamics.
If you’re really interested in learn more about financing commercial solar PV projects, I have three resources for you.
Click here to sign up for our Solar Executive MBA and Learn how to Finance Commercial Solar PPAs from A to Z
Check out our Mastering Commercial Solar Finance course and get hours of expert instruction, advice from a $20MM solar tax equity investor, and a downloadable guide for just $29!
Check out Solar Action Alliance to learn more about the most bountiful and powerful energy source on earth: the sun.
The residential market is driven by 3rd party PPA providers and companies offering their own in-house financing. For example, 3rd party providers include SunRun and BrightGrid , as well as companies offering their own in-house financing, like SolarCity. The 3rd party companies provide a useful tool because it allows smaller companies to compete with the larger SolarCity types by allowing them to offer competitive financing. Each of these companies has been able to tap into large amounts of institutional capital by providing stable returns.
The utility market (20MW+) on the other hand, is very concentrated and is typically dominated by manufacturers who create or buy their own development department. In the SEIA’s last report 51% of the utility market was dominated by only 12 firms. As you can see from the list of top utility solar developers below most are manufacturers, and the majority of the independent developers, like Recurrent Energy, have been bought by manufactures. Recurrent was recently acquired by Sharp last year.
The commercial market in the built environment is a different environment from both utility and residential scale, as it requires a more technical understanding of solar, structural and roofing of the building then residential but is also heavily dependent on financing.
[…]
