SEIA Absorbs Community Solar's Own Advocate: Now What?

Ray: Welcome to Community Solar News! Della, brace yourself, because Illinois is back. Again. Two weeks in a row now.

Della: Two in a row? Last time you dared me to keep tallying and I specifically said don't get used to it.

Ray: Well, get used to it a little, because today's opener actually has receipts. One year in, real numbers, the whole ledger.

Della: Receipts. Okay, I'm listening.

Ray: Rockford, Illinois. Winnebago County. There's a project out there that just turned one, and instead of a quiet little party they published the whole thing.

Della: Wait, which project?

Ray: You'd know it as Rock Cut Solar. They've renamed it. It's Mark Raeder Legacy One now.

Della: Okay, that's a name with some weight behind it. Who's Mark Raeder?

Ray: Didn't say, wasn't the point of the release. The point is the number. Six point two megawatts, thirty five acres, twenty thousand pieces of equipment out there, and it's one of the biggest community solar projects on ComEd's entire system.

Della: And the subscriber side?

Ray: Nearly six hundred ninety residential customers, plus a hospital. OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center is subscribed too.

Della: A hospital subscribing to a community solar project. That's not a small account to land.

Ray: It's not. And here's the number I actually care about: one hundred sixty three thousand dollars saved in year one. Ninety eight thousand of that on the residential side, over sixty five thousand for the hospital.

Della: I'm guessing not every subscriber got the same cut.

Ray: Right, low income subscribers got fifty percent off their bill, everybody else up to twenty percent.

Della: That fifty percent floor for low income subscribers is the part I want people to actually sit with, because that's not a rounding error. That's the program working exactly the way it's supposed to on the households that need it most.

Ray: Agreed. And on the build side, this was real Illinois union labor, over thirty three thousand working hours from local contractors. Ground broke August twenty twenty four, energized last August.

Della: And they didn't just let it quietly run for a year, they held an actual anniversary ceremony for it. Yesterday, in fact.

Ray: September sixteenth. Construction wrapped back in April of twenty twenty five, energized that August, so they had a full four seasons of real weather and real usage before standing up to read these numbers out loud.

Della: Four seasons of actual bills, not a groundbreaking photo op. That's a very different kind of flex.

Ray: Same. And Della, guess who's behind it.

Della: Oh no.

Ray: Summit Ridge Energy owns and operates it, Trajectory Energy Partners developed it.

Della: Summit Ridge, again? That's the fourth different hat we've watched them wear this year. BlackRock and GIP taking a stake, the Foss tax equity deal, showing up as somebody else's client on that Gordian road story last month, and now the actual operator handing out a one year report card.

Ray: At some point we just have to admit they're structurally everywhere on this beat.

Della: I'm not mad about it. Their CEO, Steve Raeder, had the best line in the release too. Well done is better than well said, and that's exactly what this project has been, a promise kept.

Ray: That's a genuinely good line for a press release.

Della: It is. And Ray, two Illinois stories back to back is going to make you insufferable.

Ray: I would never gloat.

Della: You're gloating right now.

Ray: A little.

Della: Alright, from Illinois to Massachusetts, and another name we've already got a mental folder for.

Ray: Northern Sun Energy.

Della: Who we last saw back in August owning that rough upstate New York portfolio, the bridge with the twenty ton weight limit, the brutal snow load site.

Ray: Right, except this time they're not the owner. They're the EPC.

Della: Different hat again. What's the job?

Ray: Eleven and a half megawatts of solar paired with ten megawatt hours of battery storage, in Swansea, Massachusetts. GeoFire Solar is the developer, Northern Sun is building it. Broke ground this week.

Della: SMART program project?

Ray: SMART three point oh, the newer version of the incentive.

Della: What's actually the interesting part technically?

Ray: The storage is DC coupled, not AC coupled. Northern Sun's VP, Chris Balogh, said getting a DC coupled battery project right takes close collaboration with every stakeholder and regulator involved.

Della: Which is a polite way of saying it's harder to permit and harder to interconnect than the AC coupled version.

Ray: Correct, but it loses less energy in conversion, so if you can actually push it through the process, you come out ahead on performance.

Della: That tension, AC coupled for the easier permit or DC coupled for the better economics, is showing up on more of these storage pairings lately.

Ray: And picking the harder path on purpose tells you something about how much the economics actually matter once you're stacking storage on top of an already tight program.

Della: So another company we already had filed under one job, showing up in a different one.

Ray: Twice in one episode.

Della: I noticed.

Ray: Speaking of companies with a folder, remember the joke we made about 38 Degrees North back in August?

Della: The one where they closed a debt facility from EIG and wouldn't tell us the size, and we said someone's lawyer earned their fee that week?

Ray: That one. Well, this time they told us everything.

Della: Everything?

Ray: Two hundred sixty million dollars, financing roughly eighty five megawatts across New York and Illinois.

Della: Illinois. Again.

Ray: I told you to get used to it. Lead arrangers on this one are Apterra Infrastructure Capital, Stifel, and National Bank of Canada, with BankUnited, Farmer Mac, Amalgamated Bank, and Siemens Financial Services all participating.

Della: That is a genuinely crowded table for one facility.

Ray: And it puts their total capital raised to date at one point seven billion dollars.

Della: One point seven billion. From the company that couldn't tell us a single number a month ago.

Ray: Growth changes people, Della.

Della: What did their side actually say about it?

Ray: Ryan Bennett, one of their partners, said New York and Illinois continue to be among the most active community solar programs, and developers with permitted pipelines and capital are best positioned to convert backlog.

Della: Which is the whole game right now, isn't it. Doesn't matter how big your pipeline is if you can't get the capital to actually build it out.

Ray: Permits without money just sit there.

Della: And money without permits has nowhere to go. You genuinely need both moving at the same time.

Ray: The number I keep coming back to is the one point seven billion, honestly, more than the two sixty. That's the track record that got eight different lenders comfortable enough to show up on one term sheet.

Della: Lenders don't show up eight deep on a whim. Somebody's underwriting team did a lot of homework before that closed.

Ray: That's exactly the kind of receipt this beat needed after a summer of quietly undisclosed facility sizes.

Della: Noted and appreciated.

Ray: Okay, last one, and I want your actual take on this, Della. Nobody built anything this time. The map itself just moved.

Della: The map?

Ray: SEIA and the Coalition for Community Solar Access are merging. CCSA is folding into SEIA, effective early October, board approved on both sides.

Della: Wait, CCSA. The trade group that's spent over a decade being community solar's dedicated voice, developers, nonprofits, the whole coalition.

Ray: That one. SEIA's CEO, Tim Pawlenty, called it building a stronger, unified voice for the solar and storage industry.

Della: And what did CCSA's side say, because somebody there is losing a job title.

Ray: Jeff Cramer, their outgoing CEO, said community power has become one of the most credible solutions to affordability and grid reliability.

Della: You can already tell I'm working up to a take.

Ray: I can hear it coming, go ahead.

Della: Fine, that's a genuinely nice note to leave on. But here's my actual question. CCSA existed because community solar has different needs than utility scale or residential rooftop, different program design, different state dockets, different subscriber rules. Does that get the same attention inside one much bigger tent, or does it become everybody's fourth priority?

Ray: That's fair, and I don't think anyone knows yet, probably including SEIA and CCSA themselves.

Della: I'm not calling it a bad move. Bigger tent, louder voice, more lobbying weight, that's real and it matters. I just want us checking back in six months on whether community solar actually kept its own seat at the table, or just got a smaller chair at a much bigger one.

Ray: Noted. We're checking back on that.

Della: Good. Put it on the list.

Ray: Right next to the sheep.

Della: Nothing goes next to the sheep.

Ray: Alright, that's the rundown. A project handing out its own report card, two familiar developers turning up in new jobs, a big number from a company that used to keep its numbers quiet, and a merger that might redraw the whole advocacy map.

Della: And not a single crisis in the whole bunch.

Ray: Busy week, for a beat that some weeks has nothing at all. And by the way, if you want the day to day version of this instead of waiting for us twice a week, we actually publish that now too.

Della: The Solar Docket. Free, daily, it's the stuff that moves between episodes, docket filings, block changes, program notices, with a short read on what each one actually means.

Ray: It's at community solar dot news.

Della: Before we go, quick word from our sponsor. This episode's brought to you by Our Power Co.

Ray: Their whole pitch fits in one line: you build the solar, we bring the community. If you're a developer or operator sitting on subscriber capacity you haven't filled yet, that is the entire job they do, nationwide, no fine print.

Della: And if you're listening as someone who actually wants to subscribe to a project yourself rather than build one, this read wasn't really written for you, but there's still a door. Join community dot solar, to sign up and knock something off your own bill.

Ray: One more thing on them. This show is made almost entirely with AI, and we're deliberate about whose tools we use for that. We look for companies that cover their own energy and water costs for the data centers doing the work, instead of quietly pushing that cost onto somebody else's grid and somebody else's utility bill.

Della: On a show about energy, that's really not optional for us.

Ray: And every figure you heard today, the megawatts, the dollars, the subscriber counts, all of it is sourced and linked in the show notes.

Della: Find us wherever you get your podcasts, we're on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and on YouTube if you'd rather watch this one instead.

Ray: And head to community solar dot news for the newsletter and the full show notes on everything we covered today.

Della: That's the community in community solar. We'll see you next time.