Insights from the Conductor Solar Platform
We launched the Conductor Solar Marketplace to help better match commercial solar projects to investors with third-party owned financing. Allowing multiple investors to bid on a project helps developers find the right partner to work with and ensures they get a good deal when they sell their project.
Here are a few highlights of what’s we’ve seen on Conductor as we approach our first anniversary:
We’ve seen a developer increase their developer fee $500k on one project by comparing multiple acquisition bids from investors.
On a 1+MW project, one investor’s bid was 5% higher than every other bid! Price shouldn’t always be the deciding factor, but sometimes it’s impossible to ignore.
A developer obtained a PPA rate on Conductor that was less than half the rate they’d previously been offered by another investor.
Multiple projects that would otherwise not have been sold moved through to acquisition, simply by finding better matches on Conductor.
Developers and investors are telling us that this new way of bidding helps their businesses by making deals happen, giving them new insight into the market, and making transactions easier and more efficient - which is what we’re all about.
The biggest surprise so far is the spread between the prices offered. As mentioned, the lowest spread was only 12%, but for developers that’s still huge! If you net out project expenses including EPC costs, developer fees are typically 10% - 15% of the total budget in a project acquisition. Let’s say developer fees average 10%, and you could get 12% more by using Conductor - you’re more than doubling your dev fee and saving your team time and effort.
And while we love the 1.5MW muni projects, the data points above reflect a variety of projects that don’t lend themselves well to traditional financing models. Projects have run the gamut from churches and nonprofits in the 25-150kW range to municipalities and unrated companies targeting 500kW and up. This underserved market is exactly what Conductor unlocks for developers and investors.
We’re excited about these results, and we’re only getting started - the Conductor Solar team looks forward to sharing more insights as the marketplace grows.
