SMP 26: A Developer’s Perspective on the US Solar Market

2019-04-30

Episode summary: In this episode, Steve Raeder sits down to talk about the opportunities and challenges of solar over the past 10 years. Steve also discusses Summit Ridge’s focus on community solar and offering solar to the residential community and their initiatives throughout multiple states. Also, Summit Ridge is working to overcome the financing through the lenders to bring the solar option to more residential customers. Steve talks about the next phase of the company which is to own all the projects that they develop and co-develop. About our Gues...

Episode summary:

In this episode, Steve Raeder sits down to talk about the opportunities and challenges of solar over the past 10 years. Steve also discusses Summit Ridge’s focus on community solar and offering solar to the residential community and their initiatives throughout multiple states. Also, Summit Ridge is working to overcome the financing through the lenders to bring the solar option to more residential customers. Steve talks about the next phase of the company which is to own all the projects that they develop and co-develop.

About our Guests:

Benoy Thanjan

Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies. Reneu Energy is a premier international solar energy consulting firm and developer and the company focuses on developing commercial and industrial solar and utility scale solar plus storage projects. The company also sources financing for solar projects and hedges energy and environmental commodities. Reneu Energy has brokered $27 million in environmental commodities transactions.

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. 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 also worked at Vanguard Energy Partners, Ridgewood Renewable Power, and Deloitte & Touche.

Steve Raeder

Steve Raeder CEO and Founder of Summit Ridge. In the beginning, the company’s focus was commercial customers, cities and federal agencies that Steve had worked with for years, but over time, Summit Ridge Energy changed to working with communities and developing community solar. They developed a nearly 7-megawatt community solar project in Maryland, and the company is heavily invested across Illinois. He was previously the managing director of Northeast Business Development a Sun Edison.

Insights from this episode:

Challenges of using solar power
Bringing solar power to the residential customer
Initiatives throughout the states
How trends are changing toward the future in solar power.
How to survive a competitive market.

Quotes from the show:

“There is a time, call it in the next 10 years where this will be the cheapest resource.” - Steve Raeder
“I’m a believer in the inevitability of what we’re doing.” - Steve Raeder Episode 26
“Know your space, I think timing is somewhat natural” - Steve Raeder Episode 26
“I knew what I wanted to do and I thought I knew how to do it.” - Steve Raeder Episode 26
“Stay small, you can do a lot in the space. You don’t need 95 bodies” - Steve Raeder Episode 26
“It became a very lucrative incentive and people at that time weren't sure” - Benoy Thanjan Episode 26