Energywell executive discusses community solar advancements under Think Energy platform

Within seven months, Think Energy has taken on the subscription management of more than 50 MW of community solar projects —with no plans to slow down—as the mass market focused energy retailer targets an additional 300 to 500 MW by the end of 2024, said Steve Condon, Energywell’s Vice President of Community Solar, in an interview with NPM.

Think Energy was acquired by Energywell, an energy technology company, in September 2022. The acquisition came with a license to operate in 13 states and the District of Columbia, covering 64 electric and natural gas utility territories. Their “book of business” includes more than 45,000 residential, low-to-moderate (LMI), and commercial C&I customers, according to Condon.

“Community solar is at the forefront of our offering across all the states that we’re working in and rolling out in,” Condon said. “It’s treated as another commodity that’s available in our energy warehouse—and I would say it’s the most valuable commodity available in the market.”

Think Energy was first launched in Maine in March 2023, where they partnered with UGE International, filling projects in a matter of weeks with hundreds of customers. Their community solar offering in Maine includes a 10 percent discount for residential customers, offsetting about 90 percent of their annual electricity bill, in a dual billing system. They continue to contract between 20-25 MW in the state, according to Condon.

Next, they headed to New York where they provide a five percent customer discount, off-setting between 50-80 percent of their annual electricity bill, in a consolidated bill with their utility.

Now they're headed to New Jersey, where they just signed their first contract in the state, and they’re preparing to roll out in Maryland and Illinois over the next year. Condon said he’s also excited about potential new markets, including Ohio, California, and Pennsylvania.

Condon said they’re currently supporting about half-a-dozen developers, which is about halfway to where they want to be.

A lot of their value is in their “book of business” which Condon said is growing aggressively. Currently at 45,000 customers, Condon expects the number to growth north of 150,000, maybe 200,000 customers by the end of the year, and 500,000 the following year.

In 2021, Energywell secured a 100m capital commitment from funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, as well as capital and commodities expertise from Hartree Partners, to deploy multiple energy and technology products—community solar a big piece of that. It created a model at offers more data integration, automation with the utilities, and ultimately more scalability, according to Condon.

“It is a new model and it’s something that we’re very quickly getting trust around and we’re capturing the attention of the names in the industry that are going to allow us to catapult really quickly,” Condon said.

Condon said the model solves inefficiencies that exist in the community solar market today, by offering a magnitude of products that keep up with the “ebb and flow” of the industry. He described an unstable industry where a certain number of megawatts get built in one market that eventually slows over time, sending customer acquisition companies packing into new states, or waiting for a program to expand. This is where the industry falls short, Condon explained.

“With multiple energy products, we’re always selling, and we’ve really built our sales team based on being embedded in the communities in which we’re operating,” Condon said. “So, when the market slows down in community solar, we still have energy and load shifting—if load shifting is available. That allows us to continually grow our book of business with customers that know us, like us, and trust us.”

Another significant differentiation with their business model is their retail energy platform integration with utilities which helps with customer certainty.

“When customers sign up for retail power they see us as a line item in their electric bill—they already know us—so that gets us around a lot of the challenges of mistrust in community solar," Condon said.

Within 48 hours of a customer enrolling into one of their community solar projects, the company receives confirmation from the utility, validating the account and offering information such as the customer's rate class and the last four months of kilowatt usage. That information is continually available for them to pull each month to follow changes in a customer's history.

“So, if a customer sticks with us for 10 years, we know that they have increased load because they went with an electric car or they electrified their home and we can adjust our allocations around that,” Condon said.

“It’s a model that’s unique and I think it’s very quickly proving to be superior to what we’ve built as an industry in general,” Condon said. “I think a lot of folks will be shifting to this model eventually.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.


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