Case Study: SEA Revenue Analysis Provides Extraordinary Value for Even the Well-Informed Home State Community Solar Developer

If you are a veteran of the Community Solar (CS) development world, you’ve encountered this type of firm before: The CS developer that lives and breathes their home state market. They grew up in this market and know the regulators, utilities, and the important politicians. They know the history, status and proposals of relevant rules, policies, and legislation. They also know the various components of utility retail rates (generation, distribution, transmission, energy efficiency, etc.), the basis for how the variable community solar credit rates (e.g., price-to-compare, net metering rates) are calculated, and what are the drivers of those retail rates, and how they will impact future community solar credit rates. 

For example, if this home state developer were from Maine, they could tell you why the Bangor-Hydro NEB program rates varied because they could tell you why each component of the relevant retail rates varied (see graph below) and how it impacts the ultimate CS credit rate levels.

And while this developer is doggedly confident of their own market outlook and internal forecasts… they still purchase SEA’s DER revenue analysis, because:

• SEA digs deep and provides insightful research, analysis, observations and importantly interpretations that backs-up projections.  While the developer has an edge over their out-of-state competition, there are still too many dockets to digest, filings to comprehend, and legislative initiatives to follow to allow them to play part-time rate analysts and also perform their day job. The context and information SEA provides in its detailed DER revenue analysis they find invaluable for validating internal analyses, garnering additional insight, and making business decisions.
• They, like every other DER developer (and like Bob Dylan sang), Gotta Serve Somebody. That is, they (through an internal investment committee) and their financiers need an independent, third-party analysis they can rely on and is bankable to deploy development capital. 
• SEA’s experts are there to respond to clarifying questions.  They regularly follow receipt of our DER analysis with a follow-up screen-share session. They appreciate the additional context SEA provides, and SEA’s responsiveness and candor when we just don’t know. 
• And while, as a developer, they sometimes would prefer that SEA’s revenue analysis was more “aggressive,” they know that we are straight shooters offering objective analysis without the rose-colored glasses. They also value that SEA is not beyond incorporating additional information into an analysis (we always reserve the right to be smarter today than we were yesterday) and we are not shy about updating or modifying revenue analyses and forecasts as warranted. 

In the end, SEA DER revenue analysis provides value because it makes our home state community developer client’s edge even sharper.