Residential Solar Lease

Just installed SAM to hopefully support my financial modeling for a zero-down solar portfolio - tax equity finance with partnership flip... Can SAM model this, can someone kindly assist with most efficient way to go about this in SAM.

Some key details...

- Average Solar PV system size: 6 kWp array grid-tied with 9.6 kWh battery pack cycled 'daily.'
- No net metering service hence, battery storage, batteries replaced every eight ( years.
- 20-year PPA.
- Only incentive is accelerated depreciation: 100% in year of bringing system into use.
- Portfolio growth: 1,000 systems year 1; 2,000 systems year 2; 3,500 systems year 3; 5,250 systems year 4; 6,563 systems year 5.
- Finance: Tax Equity with Partnership Flip - Yield based.
- Average Grid Tariff: USD 0.10/kWh

Need to compute cashflows, Flip Date, Sponsor Returns, etc.

Would appreciate any help, pointers, etc. to set me on my way.

Dear Godwin,

Thank you for the message.

SAM's PPA partnership flip financial models are designed to model a single large, utility-scale system that sells power at a price negotiated through a PPA. All of the power generated by the system is sold at the PPA price (with optional annual escalation and time-of-delivery multipliers). The residential and commercial models are for systems that meet a building or facility's electric load, and are compensated for any excess generation via something like a net metering or feed in tariff agreement.

Your scenario sounds like it is for a portfolio of many small systems with a PPA, although I am not sure how the project is compensated for the power the system generates. You might try using SAM's partnership flip model and modeling the portfolio of systems as a single system. There are two versions of the partnership flip model, one for a project with debt and one without debt.

Best regards,
Paul

Dear Paul

Apologies for my late acknowledgement of your kind response on this matter - I was expecting email notification of any responses, but alas...

I appreciate your suggestion and will certainly test it out and compare against my excel computations - I may have to revert with some follow-on questions once I'm deeper into SAM.

Many thanks and best regards

Godwin