Banking on Solar

Suppose solar developers could concentrate their expertise and capital on what they do best - acquiring components, negotiating power purchase agreements with their customers and constructing projects. And if they didn't have to worry about land acquisition so much, perhaps their projects would be built more smoothly. That's what Michael Halaburda is banking on. The real estate executive is the founder and president of the Solar Land Bank, the Walnut Creek, California company trying to build a business around what was just described. I recently spoke to him about the concept.

"The choke point is finding the large surface areas that are needed to make these projects scalable, whether they are land-based or on rooftops," he said. There's a lot of interest in solar power and the technologies, but he thinks a missing piece is the real estate expertise. His company's plan is to acquire the land rights, and perform transmission studies, permitting applications and connections. That's a pretty ambitious agenda and one which Halaburda knows will take years to execute.

Solar Land Bank comes from the commercial real estate markets where he and his partners assisted solar developers. The company is negotiating with utilities and independent power producers, but until feed-in-tariffs, now making its way through California lawmakers and regulators set a price, contracts won't be signed.

"A lot of the risk is being moved around," Halaburda said, which doesn't help much to build a sustainable business model. For example, a $250,000 transmission interconnection study, might be fronted by the Land Bank, but only after power prices are set.

The company has options on 300 acres, which is just a start. Solar Land Bank figures that for California to build the 2 gigawatts estimated over the next five years, about 12,000 acres will need to be acquired or leased. Solar Land Bank wants to buy at least 3,000 of those acres.
 
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