The One Number Nobody Will Say: Farmers, Frozen Bridges, and Fresh Capital

Ray: Welcome to Community Solar News!

Della: Ray, I looked at the rundown this morning and there is not a single Illinois story on it. I want that on the record.

Ray: I noticed that too. Somewhere Della's spreadsheet just breathed a sigh of relief.

Della: I'm not relieved, I'm suspicious. But fine, let's give the state a week off. What have you got instead?

Ray: New Jersey. Lightstar Renewables just got named one of only three developers picked in the state's very first Dual-Use Solar Energy Pilot Program.

Della: Dual-use, meaning the farming-and-solar combo?

Ray: Exactly, panels up top, crops or animals underneath. Lightstar, through a subsidiary called NJ Solar 2000, picked up eight conditional awards adding up to about twenty seven point three megawatts.

Della: Okay, and only three developers got picked out of how many tried?

Ray: Thirty three preliminary proposals came in statewide, adding up to something like a hundred and forty megawatts of interest. The Board of Public Utilities only approved sixteen projects out of that, fifty two point oh six megawatts total. So Lightstar alone is holding more than half of everything the state actually said yes to.

Della: Wait, more than half the entire program, on their first try?

Ray: On their first try. Projects are spread across Monmouth, Salem, Warren, and Cumberland counties.

Della: And what's actually growing under these arrays? Because I know you're dying to tell me if it's livestock.

Ray: Soybeans, hay, grains, vegetables, fruit, and yes, grazing animals are in the mix too. I didn't forget you, Della.

Della: You never do. This is what, the third or fourth grazing story we've covered this year? Warren County had sheep, Jack's Solar Garden had cool-season grasses doing better under the panels. Ray lights up every single time.

Ray: I contain multitudes, and one of them is a genuine soft spot for a well-run pasture. Sue me.

Della: Nobody's suing you, I just like watching it happen live. Okay, here's the part that actually matters for anyone else eyeing this program though: these are conditional awards, not done deals. Thirty six months to get through the regulatory filings and coordinate with the state's environmental protection agency.

Ray: Three years sounds long until you remember what dual-use permitting usually looks like when nobody's built the template yet.

Della: And it's a real gate, not a formality. Miss a filing deadline in there, or the state environmental review doesn't line up, and a conditional award can just stay conditional forever. Worth remembering before anyone gets too excited about the megawatt total.

Ray: Which is exactly why I'd rather talk about this again in a year once some of these eight sites actually clear that window, instead of celebrating a number that could still move.

Della: Fair. And there was a senator quoted on this one, wasn't there?

Ray: State Senator Bob Smith, who helped pass the underlying law back in twenty twenty one. His line was that this is exactly the progress they hoped to see, farmers producing food and clean power on the same acre.

Della: If you're a developer in a state that hasn't tried dual-use yet, this is the case study to bring to your own regulators. Somebody just proved sixteen projects can clear a first solicitation without the process collapsing.

Ray: And spare a thought for whoever's sitting on the other roughly ninety megawatts of proposals that didn't make the cut. Thirty three came in, sixteen got picked. That's a real no pile, not a rubber stamp.

Della: Which tells you the state actually screened for quality on a brand new program instead of just taking everyone who showed up. Good sign if you're trying to convince a skeptical regulator somewhere else that dual-use solicitations don't turn into a free-for-all.

Ray: And it's not one corner of the state either. Monmouth's up near the coast, Salem and Cumberland are way down south, Warren's up northwest. That's a real geographic spread for a first-round pilot, not just one friendly county saying yes.

Della: Which probably matters more than the megawatt total, honestly. If this only worked in one sympathetic county, it wouldn't tell you much about whether the model scales statewide.

Ray: Agreed. Alright, next one's less about the farm and more about the physics. Northern Sun Energy started construction on a twenty three megawatt community solar portfolio upstate.

Della: Twenty three sounds like a normal-sized story. What made you flag it?

Ray: Where they're building it. Two sites, Waterford and Boonville, New York. Waterford's a two-parcel property you can only reach by a bridge with a twenty ton weight limit.

Della: So how do you get construction equipment in?

Ray: Very carefully, apparently. Their VP said it meant rethinking how equipment got onsite entirely. And Boonville's got some of the highest snow load requirements in the country, so the structural engineers had to design around that too.

Della: That's the unglamorous part of this business nobody puts in the pitch deck. Everybody wants to talk about the megawatts and the offtake. Nobody wants to talk about the guy standing on a bridge doing weight-limit math.

Ray: It's the part I actually respect most, though. Anyone can develop the easy flat field next to the highway. This is a company choosing the hard parcel and figuring it out anyway.

Della: Okay, that's a real engineering headache, not just a press release headache. Who's actually financing this?

Ray: NYSERDA grants on the funding side, Seaboard Solar developed it, and GameChange Energy handled the racking.

Della: The part I'd want other developers to sit with is that this got built anyway. A bridge weight limit and a hostile snowpack are exactly the kind of site conditions that kill a project in diligence before anyone breaks ground.

Ray: Right, and their president made the same point, that neither site was straightforward but the team leaned into the difficult terrain instead of walking away from it. Local labor got work out of it too.

Della: It's also a nice pairing with the New Jersey story, honestly. One developer proves you can win a brand new pilot program by playing it clean, another proves you can win an ugly site by refusing to walk away from it. Different problem, same stubbornness.

Ray: I like that framing. Two ways to be the developer who actually gets it built instead of the one who gets it permitted and then quietly lets it die.

Della: So somewhere there's a spreadsheet of upstate New York parcels everyone else passed on. Feels like a story to watch if Northern Sun goes back for more of them.

Ray: I'll take that bet. Okay, Della, saved the interesting paperwork for last.

Della: You always say that, and it's always at least a little bit true.

Ray: 38 Degrees North just closed a new debt facility with EIG to keep growing its community solar and distributed renewables platform.

Della: How big?

Ray: That's the thing. They didn't say. What they did say is that this facility pushes their total growth capital raised to more than three hundred million dollars to date.

Della: So we know the running total but not the size of the actual check that just cleared. That's a very specific kind of quiet.

Ray: I tried, Della. I read that release four times looking for a number and it is just not in there.

Della: I believe you. Someone's lawyer earned their fee this week.

Ray: It is. What we do know is what the money's for: buying up more projects, pushing late-stage developments forward, growing the portfolio. They're already sitting on more than a hundred projects and five hundred megawatts under construction or operating, plus another two fifty megawatts of pipeline expected into construction over the next two years.

Della: That's not a startup raising its first check, that's a platform adding fuel to something already running. Who else is in the capital stack?

Ray: Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, Kimmeridge, and S2G Investments came in on the equity side back in July of last year. Their partner said the new facility strengthens their ability to execute on the development-stage and construction-ready portfolio they're already sitting on.

Della: And EIG's side of it, presumably, is that they think the platform's differentiated enough to keep betting on.

Ray: That's basically their quote, word for word. Well positioned for continued growth.

Della: Notice this is debt, though, not another equity round. That's a different signal. Equity investors are betting on the company. A lender writing a HoldCo facility is betting the cash flow is predictable enough to service it.

Ray: Which for a five hundred megawatt operating and under-construction book, with bill credits landing every month from real subscribers, is a much easier case to make than it would've been a few years ago.

Della: We keep seeing this pattern lately, honestly. Every few weeks it's a different platform lining up debt behind an operating portfolio instead of just chasing another equity check. Feels less like one company's story and more like where the whole financing market's heading.

Ray: Undisclosed number or not, three hundred million total and five hundred megawatts already up tells you the model's working. And underneath all three of today's stories, honestly, is the same question: who's going to fill the capacity these projects create. Which, funny you should bring up filling capacity.

Ray: Nice segue. Let's talk about our sponsor properly.

Ray: This episode is brought to you by Our Power Co. You build the solar, we bring the community.

Della: That's the whole pitch, and it holds up. Our Power Co. does community solar customer acquisition, meaning they go find the subscribers and fill the capacity for projects like the ones we just covered. If you're a developer or operator with megawatts that need a subscriber base, that's the conversation to have.

Ray: And if you're listening as someone who just wants to subscribe yourself and lower your own bill, that's a different door. Go to join community dot solar to sign up.

Della: One more thing about how this show actually gets made. It's produced almost entirely with AI, and we're picky about whose tools we use. We go with companies that cover their own energy and grid costs and use water efficient cooling, instead of quietly handing that bill to somebody's local utility.

Ray: On a show about who pays for power, that felt like the least we could do. And every fact you heard today traces back to a source, linked in the show notes.

Della: By the way, if you want the day to day between episodes, we run a free daily rundown called The Solar Docket, docket filings, capacity block changes, program notices, with a quick read on what each one actually means. It's at community solar dot news.

Ray: Find us on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, wherever you get your shows, and now on YouTube if you'd rather watch than listen. Head to community solar dot news for the newsletter too.

Della: And send us the story we missed. If your project just cleared an ugly site or your state just ran its own version of the New Jersey pilot, we want to hear about it before it shows up in someone else's newsletter.

Ray: Agreed. Alright, that's the rundown. Thanks for spending part of your week with us.

Della: That's the community in community solar.