U.S. solar + storage project developer Amped Solution announced today the closing of a financing facility with Customers Commercial Finance, a subsidiary of Customers Bank. Amped’s portfolio covers 1.8 MWDC of solar PV plus 1.2 MWh of storage across a portfolio of six privately owned hotels in northern California and San Diego County.
“We see storage becoming an integral part of distributed solar installations in the US and believe our platform is well positioned to help scale the broader deployment of capital into the C&I space,” said Dan Martin, Chief Executive Officer of Amped Solutions.
The batteries involved in this transaction utilize software by Geli to reduce demand charges, shift time of energy use to more off-peak hours, and make optimal decisions about when to self-consume energy versus net meter. Two of the hotels feature microgrids designed by Gridscape Solutions. The microgrids will provide emergency backup power for critical circuits like elevator banks.
“This transaction engaged key partners, allowing institutional financing to be secured with an innovative developer, new credit solutions and an entrepreneurial bank leasing company,” said Samuel H. Smith III, President of Customers Commercial Finance. “The platform will allow us to deploy more capital into the small distributed solar market.”
“The hotel sector is historically under-served from a solar financing standpoint,” said Channing Chen, Managing Partner of Breakaway Energy Partners, “and we see this deal as an important indication of what is possible for this sector in the future.” Breakaway served as Amped Solutions’ structured finance advisor on the transaction and worked closely with Verdant Commercial Capital as Financial Arranger.
