RE+ 2025 Conference Recap
The Ballast Rock Asset Management team recently attended the annual RE+ conference, in Las Vegas, Nevada. With more than 40,000 attendees and over 1,300 exhibitors, RE+ is the largest clean energy gathering in North America, and a cornerstone event for the solar, storage, and broader renewables ecosystem.
Over the course of the conference, the team met with developers seeking capital, connected with companies acquiring smaller-scale post-NTP (development-ready) projects, and engaged with financing partners and industry peers. The conference also provided valuable insight into safe harboring strategies, interconnection challenges, and new policy and regulatory developments, while highlighting emerging opportunities in solar, storage, and distributed energy generation more broadly.
Most importantly, the conference helped us identify potential future developer partnerships as well as exit opportunities with various established players that should benefit our private credit funds going forward.
Please see below for a summary of key takeaways from the conference:
Interconnection (IX) Costs and Capital Needs
Many of our conversations with developers and institutional buyers confirmed our thesis for the fund.
Developers are facing multi-month permitting timelines, creating gaps where capital is needed to bridge IX and early-stage development expenses.
Lenders and capital providers are increasingly being asked to provide IX loan solutions to help developers advance projects, even more crucial now that the Investment Tax Credits will sunset after 2027.
We still believe there is a gap in the market for check sizes sub $20 million. Ballast Rock’s private credit fund is perfectly positioned to meet this need and has the industry and project development expertise to effectively deploy capital.
Market & Policy Tailwinds
While our initial focus has been on projects in Illinois, there are other attractive states for solar project development.
Maryland is benefiting from surging utility prices and a new “permit-by-right” law for community solar, which lowers binary permitting risk while extending timelines.
New Jersey is shifting to a first-come, first-served allocation for 3,000 MW of community solar capacity, creating urgency for developers to secure projects.
There are promising initial discussions being held in multiple other states about increasing incentives for renewables to counterbalance the federal incentives that are sunsetting this year as a result of the OBBB.
Partnership & Exit Dynamics
Part of the fund’s risk management process is to focus on lending to projects that we believe will be attractive to take-out partners.
Large owner-operators and financial sponsors are positioning themselves as buyers of NTP and operating projects, with some newer entrants paying aggressively.
Advisory firms and financiers are actively connecting capital providers with both established developers and emerging players.
Technology & Market Insights
With the sunsetting of the investment tax credits now a known quantity, developers are more focused than ever on identifying technological advancements and operational efficiencies to help enhance project economics.
Developers are monitoring advancements in racking and storage technologies to improve project economics.
Safe Harboring Remains a Priority
Safe harboring is the ability for project developers to satisfy “start of construction” tests for their projects by spending 5% or more of the project cost on equipment, the most common of which was to buy solar panels.
In anticipation of changes in the safe harbor guidance from the IRS, developers have been aggressively safe harboring panels, transformers, and other equipment to preserve tax benefits and retain their historically high project values
Several groups we met are managing hundreds of MWs of safe-harbored projects.
Panel-based safe harboring is most common; however, transformers are an alternative that can potentially be repurposed if projects fall through.
There are also more niche methods being explored including customized racking and foundational preparatory work.
* Ballast Rock Asset Management (“BRAM”), Ballast Rock Private Wealth (“BRPW”), and Ballast Rock Capital (“BRC”) are operating entities of Ballast Rock Holdings (“BRH"), an integrated investment management company. Ballast Rock Asset Management is a non-registered entity. Ballast Rock Real Estate is a wholly owned subsidiary of BRAM. BRPW is a registered investment advisor. BRC is a registered Broker dealer and a MEMBER of FINRA / SIPC. BRC’s registered head office is 460 King Street, Suite 200, Charleston, SC, 29403. Tel: 800-204-2513. To check background information about BRC and its representatives, visit FINRA’s BrokerCheck. Please see important disclosure information in our Form CRS
