Episode Summary
In this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, Benoy speaks with Paul Grana who is Solar Software Leader and GM of HelioScope at Aurora Solar. Aurora’s cloud-based software transforms solar design, sales, and delivery. With just an address and electric bill, Aurora empowers you to generate a full, accurate, and customizable design for every customer. Paul speaks about many interesting topics like how AI has impacted Aurora, listening to the customer has led to the company being cutting edge, and solar trends.
Benoy Thanjan
Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies. He has extensive project origination, development, and financial experience in the renewable energy industry and in the environmental commodities market.
This includes initial site evaluation, permitting, financing, sourcing equipment, and negotiating the long-term energy and environmental commodities off-take agreements. He manages due diligence processes on land, permitting, and utility interconnection and is in charge of financing
and structuring through Note to Proceed (“NTP”) to Commercial Operation Date (“COD”). Benoy composes teams suitable for all project development and construction tasks. He is also involved in project planning and pipeline financial modeling. He has been part of all sides of the
transaction and this allows him to provide unique perspectives and value. Benoy has extensive experience in financial engineering to make solar projects profitable.
Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity which merged with Tesla in 2016. He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity to move into the east coast markets.
Benoy was the Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners which is a national solar installer where he focused on project finance solutions for commercial scale solar projects. He also worked for Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund, where he analyzed potential investments in renewable energy projects and worked on maximizing the financial return of the projects in the portfolio. Benoy also worked on the sale of all of the renewable energy projects in Ridgewood’s portfolio.
He was in the Energy Structured Finance practice for Deloitte & Touche and in Financial Advisory Services practice at Ernst & Young. Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. He has a MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Benoy was an Alumni Scholar at the Stern School of Business.
Paul Grana
Paul Grana is the Co-Founder and General Manager of HelioScope at Aurora Solar. HelioScope provides commercial solar installers with an intuitive cloud-based design platform that reduces design costs by 90%. It helps streamline solar design and sales, cuts soft costs, and accelerates project development. Before joining the team, Paul was the co-founder/CRO of Folsom Labs (which made HelioScope software and was acquired by Aurora Solar in 2021). Before that he was on the hardware side of the industry, leading Product Marketing at Tigo Energy. Lastly, he holds an SB in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Stay Connected:
Benoy Thanjan
Email: info@reneuenergy.com
LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan
Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com
Paul Grana
Website: https://aurorasolar.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pgrana/
SMP 157: Proposed California Community Solar Program Update(April 2024)
SMP 156: How to develop Solar and Storage on Disturbed Land with AC Power?
SMP 155: Capital Solutions for Real Estate for Solar and Battery Storage with SolaREIT
153: How Sunstone Credit is providing debt financing for an underserved market in solar?
SMP 152: How Anza Renewables is innovating solar module & energy storage procurement?
SMP 151: Proliferation of Flexible Solar in Space
SMP 150: How SunRaise Capital is innovating residential solar financing?
SMP 149: Jigar Shah, Director of the LPO of the DOE, Discusses How the Solar Industry Has to Innovate
SMP 148: How Summit Ridge Energy is dominating the Virginia Community Solar Market?
SMP 147: RE+ Conference Takeaways
SMP 146: How Erthos is revolutionizing Utility Scale Solar Construction?
SMP 145: US Community Solar Market Analysis
SMP 144: Luxpower: Introduces its Innovative Inverter Technology to the US Market
SMP 143: Insights on the US Solar and Storage Market
SMP 142: The Benefits of Local Solar
SMP 141: Unlocking Your Solar Project’s Potential with Operations and Maintenance
SMP 140: Agrivoltaics: One of the Next Frontiers in Solar
SMP 139: Opportunities and Challenges with the PJM Solar Market
SMP 138: North America Solar Manufacturer discusses how they differentiate from Foreign Competition
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures Podcasts
NASA’s Touch the Invisible Sky Audio Podcasts
Rationally Speaking
Big Ideas: Science
Math Mutation