Green Lantern in talks to raise USD 50m to support 350 MW pipeline

Green Lantern Solar is under negotiations with an unnamed capital provider for USD 50m to support a 350 MW project pipeline, said President Scott Buckley in an interview with NPM.

“Our ask was USD 20m, but the capital provider with whom we are speaking with—it's gone up to USD 50m,” Buckley said.

In November, Buckley told NPM that the capital raise was to support about 50 MW of projects, but that number grew along with their staff with the addition of a few new developers and underwriters. They plan to hire at least two more developers over the next six to twelve months, Buckley said.

About 80 percent of Green Lantern’s projects are DG and about 20 percent are utility scale. They have found success selling projects at Notice to Proceed (NTP) over the last year, and continue with this strategy, Buckley said.

“We are selling the projects at NTP because it’s above the equilibrium point of maximum value extraction,” Buckley said, pointing out that other buyers in the market were able to lock down debt for the interest rate drop. “So, their cost of capital is much lower than what we are able to achieve in the commercial lending market,” he added.

Over the last six months, Green Lantern has added utility projects to their pipeline and entered a few new states.

In Ohio, they are looking to acquire a portfolio of pre-NTP assets, and in Maine, they signed a term sheet with a project buyer for some more NTP assets, Buckley said.

“Some sites we are moving forward with in anticipation of developing community solar programs,” Buckley said, noting New Mexico.

In Vermont, they sold half of a 9-project portfolio, totaling about 7 MW, at NTP to an unnamed buyer, who they are working with to sell the other half. The nine projects are a mixture of both brownfield and greenfield locations across the state, NPM previously reported.

“We’ve got more offers on projects than we know what to do with quite frankly—it's a very good time and it will continue to be a very good time to be a developer,” Buckley said. “I think it's great to see the number of active market participants, buyers, who are looking to acquire our projects and we expect that stream of dollars looking for a home to continue.”

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


New Project Media (NPM) is a leading data, intelligence and events company dedicated to providing origination led coverage of the renewable energy market for the development, finance, advisory & corporate community.