Learn the Shortest Possible Path to a Profitable PV Project
My spring commercial solar course—promising The Shortest Possible Path to Profitable PV Projects—starts on Saturday 13MAR10 with a full day overview of the industry, and a discussion of the story arc of the class over the next five weeks. I developed this course over a year ago because I felt I was spending too much time on bad deals, and there had to be a better way to get solar out into urban areas.
Taught at UC Berkeley’s Downtown Center (425 Market Street, San Francisco), I use the feasibility report as the framework for understanding what goes into a profitable project. Click here for a current draft of the syllabus. Here is a course overview
This course may be a great use of ~20 hours of your time if you really want to dive into what comprises a feasible solar project. The course capstone is a day of student team presentations on 24 APR. You and your team present your feasibility report on a potential solar project of your choosing.
What is new this semester? We will discuss the $700M in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds that have been allocated to hosts in California, and what it will take to get this financing tool more widely used. Understanding Utility Feed in Tariffs and how to use them to capitalize projects. And PACE—Property Assessed Clean Energy financing—a potential blockbuster capitalization tool.
You will learn a great deal from your fellow students—you will be working with them to understand, underwrite, and present potential solar investments. We use Microsoft Excel [or Google Docs], Google Sketchup and Google Earth as evaluation tools—give yourself a headstart, download them now [they are free] and start to play with this software to understand how these tools work. All course materials will be available on a class-specific Google Groups site that serves as the online partner to your classroom work. Here are the texts I use:
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Course intent is to build a foundation for getting commercial solar projects identified, quickly selecting the feasible ones, and putting them on a track to a real deal. Planning and Installing is technically complete enough that you can really dive in, or just refer to it when needed. I believe this is the best current overview and reference on PV--it covers what is happening in Europe and the world, for PV is a globally applicable technology. When you do a feasibility study, you want it to lead to a project, and the study isn't going to do it on its own. I added Strategic Selling because no one has a project until someone sells something.
My perspective is that of a seasoned solar developer with over twenty years of commercial real estate investment and development experience here in Northern California.
I hope you can join me for this course. First session is Saturday, 13 March from 9A to 5P, then five Tuesday evenings from 630P to 930P, capping off with Presentation Day on Saturday, 24APR from 9A to 3P with a debrief afterward at a local restaurant.
