New Project Media

INTERVIEW: CleanCapital CCO on firm's push for community solar and storage acquisitions

“Bell said the team would “absolutely” be continuing to target community solar acquisitions like these two projects in Massachusetts moving into next year. While Bell says collaborating with a good developer is key, the most critical piece to consider when targeting community solar acquisitions is subscriber management.

“When acquiring any operating project, it is important to understand off-taker performance,” Bell said. “For community solar, we pay close attention to the default rate among existing subscribers. The trickiest part is after acquisition when we transfer existing subscribers over to our subscriber billing and maintenance system. We want to make that transition as painless as possible.”

With these two projects in Massachusetts, CleanCapital’s total footprint in the state now exceeds 50 MW. Bell says the firm’s focus on Massachusetts directly correlates to the state’s SMART incentive program, which attracted strong community solar development in the state.

“Massachusetts is a great example of how forward-thinking and consistent state policies attract investment,” Bell said.

With a strong footprint established in Massachusetts, Bell says the firm is now setting its eyes on other states that have robust community solar markets like New York and Illinois.”

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INTERVIEW: CleanCapital CCO on firm's push for community solar and storage acquisitions — New Project Media CleanCapital has acquired two operating Massachusetts community solar projects from EDF Renewables with a combined capacity of 12 MW, marking their fifth acquisition close this year.

INTERVIEW: Standard Solar, Inc. CEO says interconnection costs may result in ‘unviable’ Northeast

“For years, Standard Solar has been a leader in community solar development, particularly in the Northeast where the market has thrived through a healthy environment for state incentives. The company now owns 223 operational projects with 60 projects finalized over the last year. But now, company CEO Scott Wiater, says he fears the ballooning cost and delays for interconnection are threatening to make the Northeast “unviable” for future development.

Although Wiater says the COVID-19 pandemic is partially responsible for slowing down permitting and interconnection, he says he views utility management and unwieldly state subsidies as bigger issues. Wiater highlights the New York market as a specific example. Standard Solar has 69 MW of operational solar in New York, the majority of which were established in the early days of the state’s VDER incentive program. Since then, however, multiple changes to the incentive structure have resulted in challenges penciling projects going forward.

“Unfortunately, New York’s a mess,” Wiater said. “Every time the legislators try to make things better up there; they make it worse. It’s just a really complicated, not very functional system.”

As highlighted in the recent NPM Community Solar Report on New York, the New York incentive program has gone through a number of changes. The allocated capacity for the state's most recent incentive, the upfront community adder, has been completely filled and closed, leaving developers waiting for further tranches to open up to proceed with planned projects. Wiater says Standard Solar is among those with “several good projects parked” waiting for new incentives.

“We’ll move forward when it makes sense, but there’s a lot of stranded projects in New York right now,” Wiater said.”

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INTERVIEW: Standard Solar CEO says interconnection costs may result in ‘unviable’ Northeast — New Project Media For years, Standard Solar has been a leader in community solar development, particularly in the Northeast where the market has thrived through a healthy environment for state incentives. The company now owns 223 operational projects with 60 projects finalized over the last year.

M&A: Texas-based renewable developer Tri Global pursuing sales process

“Renewable energy developer Tri Global Energy, have hired advisors to run a sales process, said two sources familiar with the situation.

The process is in its early days.

The Dallas-based project developer is among a swath of middle market developers expected to explore strategic alternatives after larger utility-scale developers were sold earlier in 2021.

Tri Global mostly develops onshore wind projects in Texas, but also has onshore wind, solar and storage projects in Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to its website.

Tri Global was founded in 2009 by John Billingsley Jr. and started off on a unique concept known as The Wind Force Plan. This allowed him to lease up 670,000 acres in West Texas land in fewer than three years on the premise that landowners would get guaranteed payments regardless if wind turbines were placed on their land. This approach led to initial onshore wind development and later solar.”

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https://newprojectmedia.com/news/texas-based-renewable-developer-tri-global-pursuing-sales-process

Texas-based renewable developer Tri Global pursuing sales process — New Project Media The Dallas-based project developer is among a swath of middle market developers expected to explore strategic alternatives after larger utility-scale developers were sold earlier in 2021.

SOLAR + STORAGE: Prolific data center build pipeline has knock-on impact to renewable equation

“Data centers need to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week to service their customers, which leads to a complicated question of what mix of renewable and thermal generation is required?

“While we favor solar and wind, it is becoming more common to see hybrid projects that combine the two technologies, as well as add several hours of storage to get relatively close to a baseload product. Our PPAs are always with off-site projects, and we like to see 10-15-year fixed price agreements,” said Travis Wright, Vice-President of Energy and Sustainability for QTS Data Centers in an interview with NPM. Wright says QTS will look at various solutions to combat intermittency including battery storage and pumped hydro storage in select markets.

And there will be more opportunities to explore this mix down the road. The US data center market for new construction was valued at USD 8.4bn in 2020 and forecasted to reach a value of USD 13.9bn by 2026, according to the website Research And Markets. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook already occupy data centers in areas of Northern Virginia and Austin, Texas. Moving forward, what will drive expansion is those companies moving into tier 2 cities such as Columbus, Ohio and Denver, subsidized data centers to handle the healthcare industry and plans by the U.S. Army to spend up to USD 249m to deploy cloud computing services and data centers.

To help meet demand for further datacenters, companies such as DigitalBridge, who did transactions to recapitalize both Vantage Data Centers and DATABANK in recent years, and publicly traded behemoths such as CyrusOne and Digital Realty Trust are becoming major players. Blackstone, through its various fund groups, closed a USD 10bn take private of QTS earlier this year.”

Demand for renewable energy from data centers is one of the main drivers of new load growth across the country. Learn more about the up-and-coming players in the space and the cutting-edge offtake contract structures they are using by accessing NPM here: https://newprojectmedia.com/sign-up



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Prolific data center build pipeline has knock-on impact to renewable equation — New Project Media The notion of data centers being a major driver of power demand in the next decade is not going to abate any time soon. A similar movement is under way to “greenify” new projects.