Solar Financing
Financing solar projects has become a very streamlined and easy process in the commercial solar space in recent years. SilRay has a team of financing specialists focusing on obtaining financing for our client‘s energy projects. We partner with multiple financing institutions, including banks, leasing companies, private equity firms and institutional investors. Our financing services including the following type of solar project financing packages:
Solar Loans
Our banking partners have a variety of programs for solar loans for each project. It is a project based financing. They offer very competitive interest rates which are often below the market rate with a fast approval process.
Solar Line of Credit
Based on the company‘s asset value, our banking partners also offer a business line of credit to finance any solar related projects.
Solar Energy Equipment Lease
Solar energy equipment financing describes a loan or lease that is used to obtain the solar system for generating solar energy. It refers to a loan to finance the entire cost of building the solar system, including equipment and labor costs. SilRay works with multiple energy equipment leasing companies to offer our client the most competitive equipment leases in the market.
Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
For the larger commercial solar systems, when the business does not have enough tax credit appetite, or simply does not have any tax credit appetite to offset their tax liability, we highly recommend the Power Purchase Agreement as the best option to finance solar projects and known in the industry as the PPA. Many nonprofit organizations are adapting PPA to build their solar generation facilities to reduce and offset the high electricity costs. SilRay has successfully worked with schools, hospitals, government agencies as well as churches and temples using PPA as the financing instruments.
The duration of PPA is normally between 25 or 30 years. At the end of the 5th year, the end-user user usually has an option to buy back the system from the financer/system owner.
A critical and attractive feature of the PPA is that it is a zero-money down solution for the business. You only need to pay a separate monthly bill at a lower rate compared to the original utility company‘s monthly bill. This will allow the businesses and nonprofit organizations to promote themselves as green suppliers, and in the meantime, they will be able to reduce their daily operation cost significantly, without maintaining the cost of solar systems, insurance and the burden of owning the energy systems.
Prepaid Power Purchase Agreement (Prepaid PPA)
Prepaid PPA credits partial or 50% of the tax credit back to the end-user and offer discounted. The amount of the discount is based on the system size. The end-user will not own the system until the beginning of the 6th year. The benefits of adapting Prepaid PPA option are:
• Most every business or non-profit organization qualify
• Path to Ownership is faster and simpler
• Peace of Mind Maintenance for the first 5 years
• Greater overall lifetime savings than a normal PPA
Solar Tax Lease (Operating Lease)
A solar tax lease is a form of operating lease in which the lessor–the equipment leasing company–is considered the owner of the property for tax purposes. With a tax lease, the lessor assumes the costs and benefits of ownership, including depreciation and tax credits. Meanwhile, the lessee can claim their monthly lease payments as a business expense for tax purposes.
These types of financial arrangements are sometimes called true leases or true tax leases because they more closely resemble traditional leases. By trading the federal income tax credit and initial depreciation in return for subsidized, 100% tax-deductible lease payments and later taking depreciation (after exercising a purchase option), companies achieve a similar or lower after-tax cost of ownership using the program‘s lease versus a bank loan!
The solar tax lease is perfect for S Corps and LLCs that cannot directly benefit from a federal income tax credit and companies who are seeking to reduce significant operating cost.
