Open Energy is now offering “fast and direct” lending for your solar project. The new marketplace lending platform is matching institutional / accredited investors with renewable energy projects in the form of debt between $500,000 and $10 million. The site draws a direct comparison between traditional finance showing a time to loan as “6 months to a year” and their platform at “30 days”. Open Energy wants to provide project loan financing and refinancing to commercial and industrial solar developers and asset owners utilizing an innovative, proprietary online borrower platform.
The NYC based company was founded in 2013 by Graham Smith and is backed by GLI Finance in the UK. Smith did stints as a management consultant at both Deloitte and Andersesn. He went on to start two brokerage firms, Axiom Global and then Phoenix Partners Group. While he was at Phoenix he managed Greenworks where he secured $75 million of finance for some of the UK’s first utility scale solar projects.
“The commercial market is primed to grow in an exponential way, and the feedback we have received from developers has been energizing, as they turn to us for solutions in filling this market gap,” said Graham Smith, founder of Open Energy. “With Intersolar just around the corner, we are excited to launch our new website and introduce our unique set of tools to help developers obtain the loan capital they need to get their solar projects up and running.”
Co-founder Michael Blomquist recently explained their goal is to provide commercial and industrial solar projects easy access to construction and term financing. Their new platform is described as “first of its kind”.
OpenEnergy is not alone in the renewable energy marketplace lending space. Mosaic is one of the first platforms in the US. In the UK you have Abundance Generation and Trillion Fund. There are others in continental Europe. When you contrast the bank process to online direct lending – there remains plenty of room for many entries into this niche space.