EP.5 Behind the Scenes of Community Solar Revenue Optimization with Sana Jameel of Ampion

Banking on Solar - Ep. 5 - Sana Jameel
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[00:00:00] Bart: It's time for banking on Solar. This is your host Bart Frischknecht. Solar developers, investors, and lenders risk losing projects when they bog down during financing. Banking on Solar is is the podcast community where energy transition project financing stakeholders share lessons learned so that more projects get built.

On today's episode, you'll hear my chat with Sana Jameel. Sana is vice president of account management at Ampion, a service provider and key player in the burgeoning community solar industry. 

At Ampion Sana leads the account management team, the group most responsible for ensuring developers and asset owners maximize revenue for their community solar sites. Sana has nearly a decade of experience the clean energy industry. She is consistently front and center in helping developers navigate industry challenges help developers successfully reach milestones throughout the life cycle of their community solar projects. Sana takes pride in helping to drive the growth of the solar industry, pushing additional clean energy to the grid and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Now on to show. 

Sana, it's great to be connected and talking to you today. I am excited to learn more about your insider's perspective on community solar. I'd love for you to just to tell me a little bit about how you got to your current role as the vice president of account management at Ampion and what, what Ampion is all about.

[00:01:24] Sana: Yeah, sure. And thank you for having me. Really excited to be here and, yeah, have this discussion with you. So a little bit about me. I have been here at Ampion for about six years, but prior to growing our account management and our client services team at Ampion, I have some previous experience in customer service through a number of residential rooftop companies mostly based in, well, all based in Massachusetts, but mostly working and building and installing residential solar in Massachusetts 

My undergrad degree was environmental science. And so I've always just had a interest in leaning in kind of the environmental industry. So I think my professional career has really melded well with my educational background and my early interest. So I've been lucky and grateful to work in this industry. 

It's been about a total of 10 years in the renewable energy space with the focus on solar and with a focus on, on customer and client success. And yeah, to bring it back to the beginning decided to make the jump to Ampion about six years ago after feeling transparently that I had hit a ceiling In my previous role and at that point in time, I had been familiarized with community solar to a small degree, but Ampion was exciting to me as a new kind of trailblazing company in the space that I was excited to be a part of. 

I was one of our first account managers. So it was a role that the company identified was needed. We had. A direct customer success team, which is the, the subscriber side of community solar, but it was realized that as our clientele was growing, we needed a client success to be integrated as well.

So I've really been. On our account management or client success team from the ground. And I've helped build and shape our department and our services and the scale has, has proven a success here. 

[00:03:22] Bart: That's awesome. And it's a really exciting time for community solar. As we look at the landscape around community solar, I think a lot of us that are in the space, but not sitting in your seat, we think about service providers that support community solar development. And I think the thing that's top of mind is like find my subscribers, right?

Like that seems like the thing, but different service providers start and finish what they provide for developers and investors at different points. I'd love it if you could just tell a little bit about, you know, when does Ampion engage with a project or a project developer and, and what do those services entail?

You know, what, what actually happens through the life cycle of one of these community solar projects?

[00:04:03] Sana: Sure thing. Yeah. I think, you know, our bread and butter is really long term asset management. We want to be involved early on in development, not necessarily involved in the direct development, but informing I guess pro formas or project economics and, and educating developers on community solar markets and what type of subscription base and long term management considerations that they should take into account when, when deciding to develop and really planning to optimize their long term revenue.

Our main services are then subscription acquisition. And so finding customers rate payers to subscribe to community solar assets, and we don't want to just stop there.

Ampion, we, we look long term. So not only are we subscribing portfolios for our developer clients, but long term, we're managing the subscriptions on that project, which to expand on that a bit, a bit means allocations management utility interfacing, billing in markets where we do have to build the subscribers directly for their community solar and long term compliance management as well, so making sure we're operating within the regulatory rules. And, you know, long term I guess, revenue optimization to use that term again through those various services that we provide. So ideally our business model is that we are the long term asset manager on these projects and portfolios. So for the 25 plus year life cycle of these projects. We want to be involved and we want to continue those again, allocation, billing, customer care services, all in an effort to optimize the revenues for the long term asset owners.

[00:05:49] Bart: Nice. That has another question pop up in my mind, just in terms of thinking about. There are lots of ways that an investor or developer could go to market, so to speak, in terms of developing renewable energy, what have you observed is the appeal. Or maybe even some of the challenges of community solar as, as really an asset class, right?

Something that your clients are saying, Hey, we're, we're committed to this. We wanted to build this versus other renewable energy projects, whether they be solar or others. But, but what there is a distinction between someone who says I'm committed, I'm going to do community solar versus, you know, do behind the meter commercial or go utility scale or other things like that.

[00:06:26] Sana: Yeah, 100%. It's a great question. I think, you know, community solar in and of itself is niche within the industry. Yeah, I would, you know, I think the same things. And what I've learned through the developer relations that I've had over the few years is that you know, compared to utility scale you know, typically it's a, it's a five megawatt cap within many markets on community scale.

And so from one angle that becomes like a more manageable development size. So there's lower barriers to entry with a cap on a system size at, you know, around five megawatts, but it's not small scale where rooftop, you know, is, is more limited. So it's almost a sweet spot from that perspective for many developers. I also believe the incentives tied to community solar, which are made available through mostly state level regulation, but in some case, federal are also very attractive to these developers whereas, again, comparing to a utility scale project, you know, the return on the generation is typically going to be more or less relative to a wholesale rate, so pennies per kilowatt hour whereas community solar, the the direct incentive for generation is typically more attractive because it can oftentimes follow the full retail rate that, that consumers are paying for electricity. I think beyond just the generation incentive, there's additional incentives that make these projects attractive.

And so from a project economics standpoint, I think developers see the benefit of a community solar development or at least the, the investment in it in addition to any other development that they're doing from a diversification standpoint. And I think there's also kind of call it social aspect to it, which, you know, these projects are community driven.

There's. I know like the the coalition for community solar or CCSA has where which I believe, you know, community solar is an attempt to democratize access to the environmental or financial benefits of solar that not every you know, everyday person has access to. So I think there's an appeal there as well where, you know, there's essentially a bridge created where between, you know, solar access or renewable energy access.

Or the benefits of renewable energy access to everyday residential or small commercial consumers as opposed to large commercial or corporate or public consumers, which have more direct access to other types of renewable energy development.

[00:08:59] Bart: Yeah. That I actually wanted to follow up on that because when I first learned about community solar. It seemed like a very natural connection to, you know, a bigger, not huge, right. But bigger than your rooftop opportunity to put solar somewhere where you can get access and build a bigger project, but then provide that to people, residential consumers, right.

People who don't have access to solar any other way. I've since learned that a bunch of communities solar has commercial off takers as well, right. That there are opportunities for Commercial groups that don't have a good way to do solar themselves to do that. What could you, what can you tell me about Ampion's mix in terms of the clients that are coming?

How much are those developers looking for pure residential or a mix or pure commercial, and maybe what are some differences across the industry in terms of how developers are approaching that opportunity?

[00:09:55] Sana: Yeah you're, you've hit the nail on the head. So there's, this is definitely a loaded question, so I'll try to be as concise and detailed as I can be. So there's a lot of components here. There's. Market driven requirements when it comes to community solar offtake. Some markets require and most often do, actually, a level of residential subscription because of the community driven aspect of these incentives or proposals but they oftentimes do allow for some level of commercial offtake as well. And although there's programmatic requirements that need to be followed, there's also financial, financially driven considerations to make which developers, of course, have to take into account.

And so. There's pros and cons to both. You know, oftentimes even developers are more leaning towards subscribing sites with a hundred percent residential offtake. And there are many reasons to do that. Again, to meet regulatory rules to push, you know, community driven marketability. But also from a economic standpoint. 

Typically in most markets, and I'm speaking a little broadly here, residential subscribers are often the most lucrative to put on the project because, again, in general, if the applied credit rate is following their retail electricity rate, in general, residential customers always pay the highest electricity rate.

However, and this is something that Ampion is constantly educating our developers on, because, We want to break kind of that linear thinking where you know, a fully subscribed site with residential customers automatically equates to the greatest economic gain because zooming out I think thinking about actual, you know, revenue realization is very important because residential customers oftentimes also come with a greater risk of, of churn, which means that, you know, their accounts are closing, they're moving, they may want to cancel their agreement. They're typically allowed to cancel agreements more easily because of consumer protection laws in place, which definitely deserve to be there. And, you know, because of some of these reasons, they can sometimes you know, cause some level of default on these projects when it comes to paying for their community solar benefit at their discounted rate.

Of course in any case, consumers are always saving through their community solar subscription, which I want to make clear. So we're always educating developers on the nuances and again, the, the actual longterm management and expectation of customer classes on the site and not like linear, upfront thinking of, you know, residential equals better incentives. And so I think the industry and markets have seen those, you know, those nuances as well and understand that it makes sense to reserve some capacity in community solar markets for commercial customers, whether those be small commercials or, or large like anchor level commercial customers and Ampion as an organization Sees the benefit there as well.

And so we like, we often are educating our developers again to allow the subscription of these types of customers onto their assets. In addition to any, any smaller rate classes. And although they may have to give on some monetary gain per kilowatt hour, what they're in, in tandem or you know, the, the, the give, the, or excuse me, the take there is that those subscriber agreements with those larger customers are, are much stickier.

They're typically longer. The, the cancellation terms are, you know, definitely tighter. And those, those customers rarely default, they rarely churn. They're not moving in and out as often. And so there's more stability with that, that customer class as well. And those are just like a few considerations across the board.

Definitely a lot of pros and cons, but again, educating developers on you know, the, the benefits across and, and why we recommend certain customer mixes on certain projects is, is a huge part of our day to day and one of kind of Ampion's core services to, to developers out there.

[00:14:10] Bart: Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm sure there are so many things happening behind the scenes in terms of what's the right mix for any particular project. And how does that all work into the master plan for that? And I'm guessing it gets complicated too, because it feels like you could sign longer term, more like known pricing with these commercial customers versus just by mandate having to, you know, follow the, follow the retail rates for residential customers. And so there's, yeah, there's, I'm sure there's lots of levers that happen behind the scenes. 

So that may be a piece of the puzzle, but if, if you could briefly just, you've talked about revenue optimization a few different times, and that's something that's really fascinating to me.

And I, as I did some background research before we got on the call today, I was trying to get straight in my head, What might the different components of that be? And you've talked about how. The different services you provide help the asset owner optimize their revenue over time. But if you could just bullet that out or break that down, what are the components that help someone, you know, to get the right customers into the subscriber base and then manage that asset over time that help them optimize their revenue versus just that naive perspective of this pro farmer looks good. The solar is on, we've gotten into connection. Like we're, you know, start printing the money, right? Like there's, there's more happening there. So I'd love for you to illuminate that a little bit.

[00:15:33] Sana: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's really our core competency here. So it starts early on with yeah, the, again, education of what the subscription ideal subscription mix is, or the right subscription mix is to, to optimize, but also think about long term management as well. So I think, As we get subscriptions in the door our, our platform, our product and our, our people and our process really I think our, our, our strongest tool sets in, in which. enable our subscriber acquisition to really operate efficiently and at scale. So we have acquired well over a gigawatt hour of customer load at this point, which is all managed through our proprietary online web based platform. And so, We've made a ton of investment both, you know, or all time money people into developing and engineering our platform.

And one of the core focuses we've had on in the past few years as, Subscriber acquisition needs have scaled is making that subscription experience for the end rate paying customer to be as smooth as possible. And so we want to entice people to sign up for these programs because today, community solar is not a household term.

It's not something that, you know, many everyday people know about or maybe an option for them depending on where they live. So you know, marketability of the subscriptions and, and making that enrollment jurors, the journey extremely easy for, for customers to want to enroll is, is something that we've really focused on.

And I think again, the, the results of those efforts is being seen because we're we're enrolling, you know, hundreds of subscriptions every week here. So that's, that's one. We have a wide subscription base so we can talk with developers who are developing and say you need this site filled, we actually have the customers already on the shelf for you to fill this particular site.

So I think that's step one and that gives, you know, confidence to developers that they actually can fill the projects and, and thus make sure that the generation is subscribed early on. I think on the flip of that is again, the long term management of those subscriptions, because they can't be set it and forget it.

We have dedicated teams that are monitoring daily the allocations of subscribers, making sure that they're getting the right amount of credits to offset their utility bill appropriately. Site production changes, credit values change and then customer usage changes as well. So it's constantly monitoring all of those components to make sure that customers are consistently receiving the right allocation percentage from a project to incentivize them to stay on long term as well.

You know, if they're getting too little credits, maybe they want to move to another project. If they're getting too many credits then we definitely want to dial that back so they're not essentially overpaying for community solar. So that's hugely important when it comes to revenue optimization because allocations management.

And, and doing it right essentially ensures that, you know, community solar credit bills are being paid on time. So that's one. I think long term customer care is also huge and one of our core services as well. And actually it's something that developers often communicate is, is not something that they want to be doing.

Developers in general want to focus on putting steel in the ground. And so we take on the heavy lifting on the other side of the coin when it comes to subscriber management and, and customer care again is a huge component of that making sure customers know the benefit that they're getting, because again, this isn't a household product, especially when it comes to residential subscribers, making sure any questions they have about their utility bills or the credits on their utility bills making sure those are answered promptly and clearly is really important, again, to incentivize customers to stay and not you know, cause them to think about cancellation because they're not really getting or understanding the benefit of what they've signed up for. So I think all of these things you know, in addition to, to many, many more are processes or protocols that we have in place and services really in order to keep customers as sticky as possible and make sure they're staying on these projects and, and essentially, you know, not defaulting or turning off. I will say because of what I had mentioned earlier, because we have a healthy pool of subscriptions on the shelf, and because our, our platform and our acquisition teams have you know, they're, they're penetrating these markets really effectively, when from a revenue optimization standpoint, we know some level of churn and customer turnover is inevitable. As mentioned earlier, people move, utility accounts close, et cetera. And so replaceability is also key when it comes to revenue optimization and long term asset management and project economics.

Because When a customer leaves, we want to make sure we get a new customer put into their place immediately. And again, because we've, we've built a community of potential subscribers here at scale part of, you know, Ampion's services and benefit to these developers is, is we can maintain fully subscribed sites, even when we're dealing with the nuances of, of moving or, or modified subscriptions.

[00:21:04] Bart: Nice. That's really helpful. I think, yeah, laying it out like that and seeing big picture, it's about getting the right people in. But then there's also a usage component where you're actually monitoring and trying to help everything stay balanced. And then there's the regulatory side and the like getting paid side, like actually what credits are coming.

And then how do you like plan ahead to the future? Like all those different things. 

Developers are thinking all the time about, okay, who's going to be my O and M provider on this project to keep the solar generating electricity, but community solar, it's not as easy as that, right?

Where you have this known off taker, you have some known process where you just push it back into the grid and then you forget about it, right? There's this maintenance part that happens on the physical asset, but then there's this maintenance part that actually happens on the revenue stream. And that, that feels like really the, the added complexity, but also the magic of, of what's happening with community solar.

[00:21:57] Sana: 100%. Yeah, you've definitely hit it there. And, and, you know, that's, that's really where Ampion excels. And I think where we flex our muscle is to take on again, that, that virtual heavy lifting. 

[00:22:10] Bart: That's awesome. In the few minutes that we have left, I would love to zoom out a little bit and just look at the market a little more broadly and maybe do this lightning round style. So I'll ask a few questions and if you could just, you know, come back with what comes out the top of your head, right.

Just in terms of where you see things from the overall market perspective. What do you feel like where, where are the growing markets? You know, I guess if you had to bucket States or areas, right. What are the mature markets? What are the growing markets? And then what are maybe, you know, out on the horizon, hope to be coming soon.

[00:22:43] Sana: Sure. Yeah. I mean, mature markets, New York, of course, Massachusetts, Maine is somewhat becoming a mature market, Illinois. Absolutely. Minnesota, Colorado, they have some pretty, you know, mature markets at this point that are evolving a bit. I think burgeoning markets we're looking at, you know, New Jersey, now that they've just released their permanent program after their pilot program.

Virginia, maybe not brand new, but definitely starting to scale and grow there as well. And then markets with bills actually being debated on now and hopefully released soon Pennsylvania and Ohio. So we're, we're keeping a close eye on all of those markets and actually, you know, penetrating some of them already.

And we're excited to, to see states open up and, and start expanding. I think long term you know, there is a, a political component to supporting renewable energy initiatives, of course. And I think to date we're seeing you know, some mostly blue leaning states that have opened up these markets thus far.

I believe there's 19 markets, including DC right now with flushed out community solar programs. So I would love to see that number be 50 states one day. And I think in the future yeah, penetrating maybe, you know, states that don't typically invest in renewables would be really great to see.

[00:24:02] Bart: Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit. We don't have spent a long time, but talk to me a little bit about California. I think we all started the year thinking this was going to be the year that California righted the ship in terms of community solar, and it hasn't happened. So I guess what's your, what's your personal perspective on where, where we are at there and what what people's orientation should be going forward.

[00:24:22] Sana: Yeah. California. Oh, it's been so disappointing, honestly, to be transparent. Actually Ampion is managing one of the only live projects and it was the first live project under the previous program, the enhanced community renewables program. That project is in Southern California. It's called Sheep Creek.

It is fully subscribed, but if people want to still sign up and join a wait list and And potentially wait for people to, to move out. They can certainly do that through our website. But we have been managing that project. And we're so excited to see a successor program come out. With more incentives and, and more push for development.

Obviously California is a large state by land. But also our most populous state. It's also the sunshine state. So, of course, it makes sense for community solar. So it's been a little. Unbelievable, I guess, that the, the legislation there hasn't been able to get that successor program off the ground when it was totally anticipated to happen.

And we actually have developers waiting with bated breath to, to start getting capacity within the new program as soon as they're able to, and, and we're waiting right there with them. 

[00:25:30] Bart: Yeah, cool. Well, thank you. Thanks for your perspective. And I think, yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of us that are all rooting for California community solar. 

When you think about your client base, do you notice any difference in terms of the types of solar projects that are actually more likely to succeed in terms of moving quickly through the process and having the chance for, you know, good revenue downstream, does it matter at all if it's on a giant, you know, warehouse roof somewhere or in a greenfield development or brownfield or like what, what does the nature of the project, you know, is there any correlation at all to, to how easy or hard or, or what the outcomes are from a community solar perspective?

[00:26:10] Sana: I, with limited direct experience on the development side, what I can say is that some markets do incentivize location based development. I know in Massachusetts, there's an adder provided to developers for building on a Brownfield, for instance. So there are some incremental benefits. I think.

Widely, there aren't too many differences or you know, things to take into consideration there, but yeah, there, there may be some incentives. I think really location does matter from an interconnection perspective, some locations and the utility grid in that location simply are oversaturated and I mean, we have some old utility infrastructure here in the states, especially You know, in the northeast and, and, you know, some, some earlier states here.

So I think it from that perspective, location does matter because if the the utility infrastructure in a particular area needs. A lofty amount of upgrades that can one be costly and sometimes cost prohibitive to developers, but two it can also take time. I believe, you know, some interconnection queues in Massachusetts or upgrade schedules, if you will, are are quoted at, you know, 60 or 80 weeks at this point, which is just a mind boggling number for some time.

So,

[00:27:30] Bart: that's crazy. Thinking about, just thinking about that, right? Like from a developer's perspective, location really matters. Particular programs really matter. And so those things build up to the financials. But. Somewhat the magic of community solar is from the ultimate subscriber, the consumer of that energy, all of that kind of goes away, right?

Like they, you, you'd say, Hey, we can offer you electricity at this price. And then it doesn't matter, you know, where it is or where it's coming from, but it, it provides that benefit which is, which is really slick. It feels like a utility, right? It all, it feels like, you know, just the way that people are used to getting their electricity.

So that's really awesome.

[00:28:06] Sana: 100%. One thing that I'd add there from a location or project type perspective, what I didn't say is marketability too. So from a, yeah, marketability standpoint, talking about you know, sometimes saying like a local community project to you, offered to you in your town is really beneficial.

But on the other side saying, you know, there's a project that's 10 towns away, but you can still subscribe it to it is helpful. And yeah, if a project is on a Brownfield and is. Kind of refurbishing that area in that way. There's, there's definitely some marketing angles you can take

[00:28:41] Bart: Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Cool. All right. Last question. More on a personal note. What does a successful day look like for sauna? We're either working on work related. What, what is success for you?

[00:28:53] Sana: Sure. Yeah. Well I manage a small team of account managers for your Ampion. So on, from a work perspective, I think a successful day is making sure my team is set up for success that they feel supported in all of the day to day work that they're doing that they feel heard. And if they do have any, blockers or questions throughout their day that they know that they can reach me and that we will problem solve through it.

Also, you know, just, I guess, more directly having positive client conversations moving along business development opportunities. All of those definitely add up to, to a good, positive work day for me where I can sign off and feel good about going to the next day as well. And then after work, yeah, it, I think a good day for me is, you know, relaxing with, with friends or family or my partner you know, cooking a nice meal maybe getting outside and in the summers, I live in Boston.

So we live for our summers over here. Sometimes drive down to the beach after work and, and, and just relax and, you know, try to melt the work day away a little bit.

[00:29:56] Bart: That's great. How can people get in touch with you if they have followup questions or things that they want to check in on?

[00:30:02] Sana: Sure. Yeah. I'm available on LinkedIn. So if you just search my name, Sana Jameel over on LinkedIn, you'll see my title at VP of VP of account management at Ampion. You can, you can find me there and feel free to shoot me a message.

[00:30:16] Bart: Awesome. Well, thank you. This has been a great conversation and hope it's the start of many more and that community solar keeps growing. 

thanks to our audience. Please subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform so that others can find the show and we can get more people banking on solar.

If you have an interesting guest idea or someone else you'd like to see on the show, please drop me a line at Bart at banking. On solar. media, or you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Now's the time to be banking on solar. There is money to be made and the planet to save. I'm Bart Frischknecht and this is Banking on Solar.