Solar Maverick Podcast SMP 41: Solar Entrepreneur Perspective on Development of Solar and Storage Projects
SMP 41: Solar Entrepreneur Perspective on Development of Solar and Storage Projects
Episode Summary
Solar entrepreneur, Ben Levy joins Benoy on the podcast this week to talk about his passion for solar and his company Round Trip Energy. Ben has a diverse background and unique perspective on what it means to be a solar developer and consultant. Their conversation spans topics such as the Washington DC solar market, dealing with massive shut downs like what happened with the hurricane in Puerto Rico, Ben’s experience and advice as an entrepreneur, and current trends and projections in the larger solar community.
About our Guest:
Benjamin is the Founder and Executive Director of Round Trip Energy, a growing renewable energy consulting and development startup, specializing in the development, financing, operation, and management of commercial and utility-scale solar, wind, energy storage, and energy efficiency projects. The company develops world-class greenfield and behind-the-meter projects that are optimized for performance and speed to deploy with Round Trip’s proprietary cost-risk-mitigation development approach.
Benjamin is a project developer, engineer, and construction manager with experience in cradle-to-grave development of world-class renewable power generations facilities across the US and Caribbean. His career in construction of sustainable projects also includes 5 years in energy efficiency project development at military bases and other Federal government campuses as well as success with leading HVAC, lighting, water, building envelope, and water treatment retrofit projects. Mr. Levy was previously a manager of Project Development at Constellation Energy and Sr. Manager of Engineering and Construction at Sonnedix, both developer-owners of large-scale power generation facilities and pioneers in the utility-scale renewable space. He led the design and construction of the 58MW solar, 22MW energy storage Oriana Solar Park, the largest solar plant in the Caribbean.
Benoy Thanjan
Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies. Reneu Energy is a premier international solar energy consulting firm and developer and the company focuses on developing commercial and industrial solar and utility scale solar plus storage projects. The company also sources financing for solar projects and hedges energy and environmental commodities. Reneu Energy has brokered $27 million in environmental commodities transactions.
Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity which merged with Tesla in 2016. He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity to move into the east coast markets. Benoy also worked at Vanguard Energy Partners, Ridgewood Renewable Power, and Deloitte & Touche.
Insight from this episode:
- What Round Trip Energy does, what makes them different, and why Ben started the company.
- The underserved areas of the solar business
- Ben’s take on the DC market and what makes it uniquely challenging
- What it’s like to work on projects in Puerto Rico including the impact of hurricanes and managing a crisis of that magnitude
- The potential of energy storage projects in the future and which markets are strong for this opportunity
- Suggestions and advice for people looking to be an entrepreneur in a world that enforces the “stable 9-5 employee” job structure
Quotes from the show:
“There’s a lot of companies doing off grid residential, and there’s a lot of suppliers providing PCS and batteries together, but there’s not a lot of companies that are integrating and providing the full permitting and analysis and implementation scope.” Ben Levy, Episode #41
“What’s different about D.C. is we have a true confinement of the supply of SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Certificates). That’s because D.C. is essentially a 9 mile by 9 mile grid that’s totally packed with residential houses and commercial office buildings. There’s very limited space to add solar.” Ben Levy, Episode #41
“The investors that win projects are the ones that are comfortable with taking a certain portion of merchant SREC risk.” Benoy Thanjan, Episode #41
“Financiers and investors are willing to take a little bit more merchant risk than they used to be and that is a product of who are the tax equity and sponsor equity investors and what’s their comfort and risk level.” Ben Levy, Episode #41
“I believe over the next 3 or 4 years regulators, policy makers, utilities, and local jurisdictions are going to be catching up and creating structures where developers and builders out there will be able to connect the real technology with the clients who need them.” Ben Levy, Episode #41
“Our bills especially here on the east coast are shifting to being more demand heavy than energy heavy because they’re realizing that they need to incentivize people to get their demand down in the times where it’s quite congested.” Ben Levy, Episode #41
“It’s a lot easier to get power back onto the grid from the storage devices.” Benoy Thanjan, Episode #41
Stay Connected:
Benoy Thanjan:
Ben Levy