Episode Summary
In this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, Benoy speaks with Sarah Moon who is the Co-Founder & Principal at Fieldworks Power. Fieldworks Power is a forward-thinking distributed energy development company focused on developing community solar projects in the United States. Sarah discusses the different community solar markets in the United States, the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act(“IRA”) for renewables, and her entrepreneurship journey.
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 Environmental Commodities 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 Tesla 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.
Sarah Moon
Sarah is the Co-Founder & Principal at Fieldworks Power which is a greenfield distributed energy development company focused on shaping new markets across the US. She was the Senior Director of Community Solar Origination at Distributed Solar Development. She was the Director Of Business Development at Solstice which is a Community Solar Customer Acquisition Company.
Below is an article that Sarah wrote about the extended value and growing importance of community solar.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/02/24/the-extended-value-and-growing-importance-of-community-solar/
Below is the article on Imposter Syndrome she was mentioning during the interview.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/imposter-syndrome-upside-0415
Stay connected:
Benoy Thanjan
Website: www.reneuenergy.com
Email: info@reneuenergy.com
LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan
Facebook: Reneu Energy
Sarah Moon
Website: https://fieldworkspower.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmoon93/
Email: sarah@fieldworkspower.com
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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
SMP 38: Why Commercial & Industrial Building Owners Should Go Solar?
SMP 37: Guest Episode - Making an Impact While Saving the World - Benoy Thanjan on the Create Your Life Series
SMP 36: The State of the Project Finance Market for Solar Energy
SMP 35: Development Capital Funding for Early Stage Solar Projects
SMP 34: The importance of solar estimating in the construction of a solar project
SMP 33: The New York Solar Market
SMP 32: The NJ Solar Market
SMP 31: Why Operations & Maintenance is so important for the useful life of the solar project
SMP 30: How to construct a great solar project
SMP 29: SREC 101
SMP 28: The Virginia Solar Market
SMP 27: How Climate Change has impacted the Economy? The PG&E Example.
SMP 26: A Developer's Perspective on the US Solar Market
SMP 25: Unique Customer Acquisition and Financing Solutions for the Commercial Energy Market
SMP 24: 2019 US Solar and Energy Storage Discussion and Solar Opportunity Zone Investment
SMP 23: Community Solar 101 with Suzanne Waters
SMP 22: US Solar Module Market Discussion and Female Entrepreneur’s Perspective with Lauren Carson
SMP 21: An Investor's Perspective on the US Solar Market
SMP 20: The Solar Intrapreneur Story: How Nate helped IGS become one of the biggest solar asset owners in the US
SMP 19: Customer Acquisition and Billing in Community Solar
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