Introducing Conductor’s New Look

Welcome back! Things may look a little different from the last time you stopped by. We’ve made a number of updates to the “user interface” here - a fancy word for what you see in the platform. 

The core functionality of Conductor Solar is the same. We’ve added some new features and moved things around a bit. But projects are shared with investors in the marketplace just as they always have been.

Here’s a summary of what’s new:

• Project setup: tailoring information to specific project types

• Community solar: explicit questions for that project type

• Battery storage: another one, do you sense a pattern here? :)

• ITC transfers: a whole new way to monetize the ITC

• Documents: more information, new display, and easier to navigate

• Navigation: find everything you need, no matter where you are

Project Setup
Project Setup is now the first section in project data and captures elements that determine what you’ll see on the subsequent screens. Think of this like a configurator; when you make changes here other data fields change, too. 

For example, a community solar project looking for a sale at NTP needs different information than a behind-the-meter customer owned project looking for an ITC transfer. Project Setup tailors the rest of the data fields, and makes them relevant to the project and the type of transaction that you’re seeking.

Community Solar
We’ve been helping developers find the right investors for community solar projects for years. But it’s always been a little imperfect in the software. With this update, we’ve added dedicated fields for community solar offtake and subscription management. And we’ve laid the groundwork for more community solar specifics in the future, for example by State and program.

Battery Storage
As adoption of battery systems has increased, so has the need to finance these systems. We’ve added batteries as a technology type, so that developers and EPCs can specify system sizes, O&M arrangements, and other key system features that influence investor pricing in the marketplace.

ITC Transfers
Okay, we totally buried the lede here. Conductor now supports ITC Transfers! There is a lot more to say about this, which we cover in a dedicated post. For-profit end-customers, developers, and EPCs can all sell tax credits to help finance new solar energy systems. And we’re building ways to make these transfers effective for the middle market.

Documents
Our file sharing system is completely customized to your project. Add placeholder containers, drag and drop files, and give access to investors when you’re ready. As a developer or EPC, you’re in full control of which documents are included and who gets to see them. 

The Documents section now has folders on the left and files on the right, so it’s easier to click through and see the status of each document at a glance. And you can now edit the document list on the same screen to configure the listed files any way you want.

Navigation
The biggest change you’ll notice is probably the new site navigation. We’ve added a left-hand menu to find projects and portfolios along with notifications and user settings. This makes it much easier to access things, no matter where you are or what you’re doing in the app.

Another change with navigation is sub-menus for project data. Within overview, budget, revenue, and expenses the sub-menus make it easier to navigate to all of the data fields and reduce the amount of scrolling required. 

Messages, which were previously in the project summary, now have their own section. This makes them easier to find and will enable some great new messaging features in the New Year.

More to Come
This update is also important beyond these specific improvements. The new user interface lays the foundation for the rest of our roadmap and will accelerate our development of new features throughout the app. What you see on a page is really a language of interrelated visual elements. We’ve built a lexicon here so that we can write software better and faster. So we’re excited to share this update, and equally excited for what’s to come.