The Kennebec Sanitary Treatment District in Waterville, Maine will save their stakeholders close to $2million over the lifetime of the ground-mounted solar project ReVision and Aligned recently completed.
ReVision Energy, northern New England's leading solar developer and contractor, has partnered with Aligned Climate Capital ("Aligned") to develop an exclusive solar offering designed to help New England's water districts benefit from clean energy with no upfront cost, by locking in below-utility electric rates.
A Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) is a common contract used in the utility industry that allows a private party to build and install a solar array at a host's site, where the host agrees to purchase the generated electricity at an agreed-upon rate. Like many things, "the devil is in the details" and a PPA can be a good or bad deal for the host depending on the structure of the deal.
ReVision Energy leads with a strong mission-driven approach and desire to create fair financing structures that allow nonprofits and municipalities to go solar and enjoy savings on energy costs - savings that can be used for more important objectives such as benefiting their communities.
ReVision's approach pairs well with Aligned, who is a mission-driven investor focused exclusively on clean energy and other climate solutions. Under this specific program, Aligned combines tax-efficient equity with long-term, low-interest loans from the USDA to provide cost-effective financing for rural-eligible sites in Maine and New Hampshire.
ReVision's role will be to identify the water districts (as well as certain municipalities) that meet USDA's rural eligibility requirements (and hence the special financing) and then use our in-house development and engineering team to design optimal solar projects for these potential hosts.
In short - for the sites that qualify, ReVision and Aligned are able to offer no upfront cost solar and a PPA package that delivers immediate energy savings vs. paying for the grid.
Eligible off-takers will also have the option to buy-out the solar project from Aligned, allowing it them to further accelerate their savings, and save thousands of dollars on its energy costs over the 40-year useful commercial life of the solar project.
ReVision and Kennebec Sanitary Treatment District (KSTD) co-hosted a webinar in early 2019 in which we dug into the specifics of how solar PPAs work for water districts.
KSTD's Tim Levasseur was our featured guest. Tim is the superintendent of Kennebec Sanitary Treatment District, and has over 40 years of experience in the wastewater treatment industry. He talks about how KSTD is taking advantage of cost-saving clean energy through a solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) without paying anything upfront, and how solar PPA's can help water districts and towns lock in long term power security at below-utility rates.
Watch the webinar at: https://enjoy.solar/2RSaWyE
Aligned Climate Capital LLC is an investment advisor focused solely on renewable energy and other sustainable real assets. The firm is committed to solving climate change by helping the world's largest investors deploy capital into climate infrastructure. It works on behalf of institutional investors, large family offices, individuals, and foundations.
Aligned manages an investment partnership called Aligned Solar Partners, which raises capital from investors that can directly utilize the tax benefits associated with U.S. solar properties. It owns and operates distributed solar assets in the Northeastern U.S. with a focus on projects serving rural America.
Limestone Water & Sewage District
ReVision Energy is northern New England's leading solar design, installation, and service company. Committed to accelerating the region's transition to clean renewable energy, we have completed more than 7,000 installations since 2003. We are locally-owned and staffed with offices in Liberty and Portland, Maine; Brentwood and Concord, New Hampshire; and North Andover, Massachusetts.
Our frequent inter-office collaboration ensures the highest level of technical expertise to be found in the Northeast. ReVision's installations currently span Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont. To ensure maximum performance and longevity in a relatively harsh northern climate, each system is designed by our in-house team trained at top universities (including Dartmouth, MIT, Brown, UMaine, and UNH) and installed by our own team of licensed and highly-trained solar technicians.
ReVision Energy is listed in Solar Power World's Top 500 North American Solar Contractors list since 2014 and has been named #1 Rooftop Solar Installer in New England since 2017. We currently have 260 full-time employee-owners in our five locations ensuring unparalleled in-house expertise in all aspects of solar development, design, and installation.
