Mercatus, an enterprise level investment analysis and decision making platform for solar energy investors, has formally adopted the Solar Access to Public Capital (SAPC) Working Group standard contract documents for both residential and commercial solar.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) convened the SAPC working group in 2013 with a mission to enable securitization of solar PV assets and associated cash flows in the marketplace.
“The SAPC public-private initiative provides the credibility and gravitas necessary to drive the establishment of standards needed to accelerate securitization and other financing options necessary to bring residential and commercial solar investment to the next level of scale,” says Haresh Patel, CEO of Mercatus. “We saw a similar initiative in the semiconductor industry called Sematech in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped ignite the U.S. semiconductor market. We feel SAPC will have a similar impact on the solar industry.”
In an effort to advance the availability of capital and financing options for the solar and other distributed energy technologies, which now includes solar securitization, Mercatus will also support the Solar Energy Finance Association (SEFA) in their ongoing efforts to advance the availability of capital and financing options for the solar and renewable energy industries.
“Mercatus has been very instrumental in the SAPC’s effort to define risk and credit parameters, especially in helping develop standard C&I risk methodologies for the SAPC’s mock rating effort,” says John Joshi, a consultant to NREL for the SAPC group.
Since its 2009 inception, Mercatus has assessed over 20 GW of commercial and residential solar projects, and currently serves 50% of the distributed generation U.S. solar market. Mercatus counts the industry’s top global developers, institutional investors, and independent power producers as customers. Subscribers to the Mercatus platform are currently targeting $1.2 billion in dedicated capital deployment for distributed generation solar investments in 2014.
“It’s great to see the continuing industry support for the SAPC standards,” says Michael Mendelsohn, senior financial analyst at NREL. “Mercatus’ contributions on standards development and incorporation into its platform have been extremely helpful and will be essential to help mobilize the industry.”
