[amor de cosmos]

Just Another Solar Deal, Or The Future?
By Guest Post
Featured, Green Building
March 3, 2014

These days, a $40 million dollar equity financing deal might not seem groundbreaking in America’s power markets. But for the keen analyst of distributed solar energy, that same investment may just herald a shift toward the future of project financing.

Count our team at Soltage-Greenwood among the latter, with an outlook brightened by the recent announcement John Hancock Life Insurance would lead a $40 million initial round of equity funding destined to finance multiple project pools across America, starting with 13 megawatts (MW) at six locations across four northeastern state.

Just another solar investment, right? Not really. While the boom in distributed solar energy generation is one of the hottest topics in today’s energy economy, most large institutional investors haven’t traditionally been interested in medium-sized solar installations, and as such, are just now getting into the game.

This trend is especially important considering clean energy investment fell for the second year in a row in 2013, down 11 percent after a similar 10 percent decline in 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. While investor appetites in solar are growing, good investment opportunities can often be hard to find, meaning dollars are scarcer and thus more important for solar developers.

Big investors typically want to invest in big projects and standardized contracts, creating difficulty financing distributed solar. That problem hasn’t played out in the rooftop residential market, where developers like SolarCity have installed record amounts of solar panels because all contracts are standard and investors only need to review a diversified pool of credit scores. The same pattern is true for the large utility-scale market where companies like SunEdison have been able to construct massive solar farms and investors only need to review one set of contracts.

But that problem has vexed mid-sized developers who can often fund project-planning phases on their own but rely on securing long-term investors after projects are fully permitted and construction can begin. Individual arrays aren’t large enough to attract large investors, but project pools can involve many different contracts. Without investment to cover the long period of exposure between when the first rack goes in to when the system switches on, potential projects pile up but result in far too few interconnections to fulfill America’s solar energy promise.

Our approach to this problem may seem simple, but it’s been a success: Package together multiple solar projects in states with favorable renewable polices to create the scale and standardization required for big investors to take notice.

http://earthtechling.com/2014/03/jus...or-the-future/

Big Solar Combined With Big Storage at SolarReserve’s 110 MW Crescent Dunes Plant
CEO Kevin Smith says the 110-megawatt solar power tower will be on-line this year.
Herman K. Trabish
March 3, 2014

SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes solar power tower is due to come on-line this year. It will be the biggest solar power tower technology project in the world that incorporates molten salt storage.

Last February, the receiver atop the 640-foot tower was yet to be built, there were two pedestals and one heliostat installed, and the ambitious December 31, 2013 on-line date was doubtful. A year later, the project, which commenced construction in August 2011, looks like a good bet to go on-line in Q3 or Q4 2014.

The tower's internal piping is nearing completion, the turbine and generator are installed and ready, and the hot and cold storage tanks, each of which holds approximately 3.6 million gallons, are sealed. The dry cooling system, which uses less than half the water used by a wet-cooled natural gas plant and 20 percent of the water used by a coal or nuclear plant, is in place.

There are 10,300 pedestals in the ground and approximately 8,500 heliostats installed. The crew of more than 900 continues to work double shifts.

In mid-March, the 3,000 bags of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate waiting in a temporary storage tent will begin being heated in a 50-50 mix and pumped into the system. That is just 10 percent of the 30,000 bags that will eventually be needed.

Molten salt storage is the advanced technology part of the system and the key to the project's market differentiation, explained CEO Kevin Smith.

The alternative is a system like the just-launched BrightSource Energy 392-megawatt Ivanpah facility. It uses the sun’s heat to turn water into steam that drives the turbine. But it does not have storage and has to carefully balance pressure and temperature, Smith said.

“On a bright, sunny day, we can maintain the temperature-pressure balance -- even with transient clouds -- by increasing or decreasing the number of heliostats focused on the receiver at the tower’s top," BSE spokesperson Joe Desmond told GTM at the Ivanpah opening.

many pics
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...Crescent-Dunes

India's Solar Energy Corp identifies site for 1 GW PV plant
03. March 2014 | Markets & Trends, Investor news, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers | By: Ian Clover

The corporation will develop its new 1 GW solar park on a 5,000 acre site in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has announced plans to develop a 1 GW solar PV plant in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in a move that bolsters the corporation's ambitious solar goals.

In September last year SECI agreed to partner with Power Grid Corporation of India on the development of a 4 GW utility scale PV power plant in Rajastan province – a project that has since come to be known as the Ultra Mega Green Solar Power Project.

This latest announcement is anchored in an agreement with Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) and Japanese lending agency, JICA. APIIC will provide the 5,000 acre site – earmarked for a district of Mahboobnagar, Telangana – with JICA providing funding for the initial infrastructure via a low interest rate loan leveraged through various multilateral agencies such as the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Energy Fund.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ant_100014391/

UK solar and wind could gain £200 million investment from The Renewables Infrastructure Group
By Lucy Woods - 03 March 2014, 12:26
In News, Power Generation, Finance

The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) is hoping to increase its solar and wind assets with as much as £200 million of investment a year.

Chris Copperwaite, from investment services firm Dexion Capital, TRIG's administrator, confirmed the figure with PV Tech's sister site Solar Power Portal.

TRIG has raised £312 million for investment UK renewables already, with a further £1-2 million of additional investment capital that could be raised in March, in equity and debt, for wind and solar projects expected next year..

TRIG aims to increase its solar portfolio to around a third, an increase from the current level of 17% and up from the 10% portion of its portfolio that solar held last year.

TRIG’s initial portfolio consisted of 14 wind farms and four solar farms with a generating capacity of around 265MW.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/uk_solar...bles_infastruc

Study Shows Securitization Can Lower the Cost of Capital of Solar PV
Alexander Metz, Clean Energy Finance Forum
March 03, 2014 | 0 Comments

The limited availability of low-cost financing is holding back market adoption of solar photovoltaics (PV). However, securitization can make project financing more affordable than it is today, according to new research from the Open Sustainability Technology Laboratory at Michigan Technological University.

Securitization of residential solar PV power purchase agreements (PPAs) can reduce the cost of capital for solar PV projects by between five and 13 percent, said the researchers, Theresa Alafita and Joshua Pearce.

The journal Energy Policy published the results online on Jan. 21 in an article titled “Securitization of Residential Solar Photovoltaic Assets: Costs, Risks and Uncertainty.”

To minimize the cost of capital, the researchers said, solar PV developers and policymakers should adopt policies that lower the risk of PPA and solar lease defaults, improve the accuracy of risk assessment, and increase the liquidity of solar asset-backed securities.

PPAs are a common means of funding solar power; they are contracts between electricity generators and electricity buyers. To access private sources of funding, solar lease providers can securitize the funds from these PPAs. Securitization is the practice of pooling debt and selling the consolidated debt as securities in financial markets.

The researchers built a mathematical model to measure the cost of the capital raised through securitization of solar PPAs. Their calculations produced some surprising results with important policy implications.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...al-of-solar-pv