A new sign greets visitors to NREL's campus (Credit: Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has launched an initiative to build an open-source database of real-world performance from solar facilities across the country. The Open Solar Performance and Reliability Clearinghouse (O-SPaRC), which uses associated data collected from thousands of information systems, will give the private market an access to public capital and provide potential investors with all necessary information about solar companies (especially new ones) quality results and risks.
“The O-SPaRC dataset will provide the market with critical data on the long-term performance of residential and commercial solar facilities,” NREL Senior Financial Analyst Michael Mendelsohn said. “This is an important step to tapping the public capital markets and offers the potential to significantly lower the cost of solar energy.”
O-SPaRC will improve access to capital by enabling credit rating agencies and potential investors to assess the underlying risk of the asset class. It will also give the private market the tools to develop investment vehicles such as asset-backed securities, master limited partnerships, real estate investment trusts, and various debt products.
The work is funded by the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Other components of the project include standardization of solar contracts via the Solar Access to Public Capital (SAPC) working group and detailed analysis of the opportunities and barriers to finance solar energy development with public capital. NREL contracted with SunSpec Alliance (an association of monitoring, component, and development entities) to build the anonymous system-performance dataset.
