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    OYA Renewables secures $216M to finance 15 New York Community Solar projects

    March 1, 2023
    Several of the projects located within low-income communities will qualify for additional tax credits of up to 20%, taking the total potential credits from 30% to as high as 50%, according to OYA
    Image credit OYA Renewables
    Oya Community Solar 63ff9f7e0f996

    Community solar developer OYA Renewables has secured $216 million in financial backing to fund 15 projects throughout New York.

    A majority of the financing is a construction-to-term loan with CIT Power and Energy acting as lead for a syndicate of participants including Amalgamated Bank, Siements Financial Services, Comerica Bank and Cadence Bank.

    The remaining $71 million is secured with Monarch Private Capital as a tax equity investment. The 15 projects are part of OYA’s 2023 pipeline for New York community solar works statewide.

    “The level of financial backing we’ve secured via these commitments is another major milestone for OYA,’ company Chairman and Co-Founder Manish Nayar said in a statement. “Not only does it significantly increase our asset base, it also advances our transition from being a developer to an independent power producer.”

    Community solar projects are built in scopes somewhere between utility-scale projects and smaller, distributed energy and behind-the-meter projects. Instead of the rate hikes that utility customer might bear for massive projects, or the huge personal expenses of residential solar, community solar developers handle upfront costs and customers can subscribe to the generation output.

    New York is aiming big for carbon reduction projects to reach Net Zero emissions status in coming decades, so OYA has been working to develop more community solar projects in the Empire State with an eye toward those customers who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

    “If you can afford a Tesla, you can probably afford residential solar,” Nayar noted in an earlier interview with EnergyTech. “But community solar is really serving folks that are renters—that’s the majority of population in the U.S. It’s expands access to clean energy to those folks who don’t have to pay money out of pocket and can see savings on their first bill.”

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    Monarch Private Capital will participate in the funding of OYA’s slare of 2023 projects via the investors’ ESG-oriented impact funds. MPC investors will then receive a federal tax credit for the renewable energy proportionate to their level of ownership, as well as cash flow from proceeds once the solar farms are up and running.

    Several of the projects located within low-income communities will qualify for additional tax credits of up to 20%, taking the total potential credits from 30% to as high as 50%, according to OYA.

     “These types of investments from highly-progressive banking partners are critical to the financing of renewable energy projects,” Nayar added. “Without them, we wouldn’t be the major force we are in the NY community solar market and the US energy transition could not have generated the incredible momentum it’s seeing now.”

     The 2023 slate of projects being funded by the combined transactions are located throughout New York State and are expected to generate almost 100 MW (dc) of renewable energy per year once complete.

    Subsequent pipeline projects that will form part of OYA’s 2024 slate are currently in preconstruction or late stage permitting.

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    (Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 15-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]).

    Follow us on Twitter @EnergyTechNews_ and @rodwaltonelp and on LinkedIn   

    About the Author

    Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor | Senior Editor

    For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

    Rod Walton has spent 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

    He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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