Solar Searching

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February 06, 2021

by a searcher from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School in Austin, TX, USA

Has anyone researched the solar panels space and able to share any insights? It is still fragmented in smaller cities but some major players like SunPower are starting to expand their reach.

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Reply by a searcher
from University of Nebraska in Omaha, NE, USA
I have 10-yrs experience in the energy industry focused on utility scale projects but we have owned / looked at resi/community/C&I solar as well...certainly tailwinds to renewable adoption broadly but I'm not sure it is an industry well suited to the search fund model. Small residential solar companies are just retail financing companies, with community solar effectively just syndicating those loans across a broader customer base. Utility scale is very competitive with Bns (Tns?) of cheap capital trying to figure out where to play.

Agree w/ ^redacted‌ comment that maintenance is probably a better route than installation, but there isn't much maintenance to do and often the OEM does a lot of the maintenance work (really the basis of their business model). Could consider buying a commercial window washing company and add panel washing services as customers install panels. Washing panels is a recurring activity that has a meaningful impact on panel effectiveness. Various companies are exploring how to automate even the cleaning component (think roombas for panels, specialty sprinklers, etc.)
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Reply by a searcher
from Stanford University in Sausalito, CA 94965, USA
Are you looking at the commercial or residential side (or both)? I had an intern looking into it for a few weeks and it seems like the best place to look is firms doing O&M for smaller projects / on tops of commercial real estate etc. The big solar farms seem to me maintained by the utility and for residential it's an installation game with not a ton of ongoing maintenance (installation is a long trend I'd bet on but does still seem choppy based on govt incentives and other energy prices). Bigger size (PE owned) but I think this is the ideal way to play solar but haven't found smaller ones yet - https://www.novasourcepower.com/. Very curious if other experts can weigh in here too!
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