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The Hidden Risks in Offsite Project Development

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Once large energy buyers decide to procure renewable energy (RE), they embark on a long journey that—although full of excitement—can be a lot of hard work. It is therefore natural for buyers to focus on the economic proposition and sustainability claims, leaving the nuts and bolts of project development risks to the RE project developer.

When contracting for RE via a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), these risks, however, are ultimately the buyer’s if they prevent a project from ever reaching operations. Examples include the failure to acquire permits, interconnection delays and cost overruns, and difficulty raising financing.

Large energy buyers must be keenly aware of project development risks to increase their chances for success. In the United States, this includes understanding time- and location-specific risks across grid operators that administer and monitor electricity generation and transmission for various regions.

Project development risks cannot be eliminated. However, buyers can mitigate them by having a robust due diligence process and engaging experts as needed.

What Are Project Development Risks?

Procurement of RE is heavily focused on building new projects, so project development risk is very important. These risks, particularly pre-construction development risks, may prevent a project from reaching commercial operations. These pre-construction development risks always exist for a RE project, but they reduce as a project reaches more advanced stages and approaches commercial operations. Although it is the project developer who is best suited to mitigate or avoid these pre-construction risks, large energy buyers should be motivated to understand these risks and, in most cases, steer clear of high-risk projects.

If a buyer signs a RE contract but the project never reaches operations, the buyer may contractually receive financial damages but will not receive monthly settlements or renewable energy credits (RECs) as desired. As a result, to reach its sustainability goals, the buyer would have to start the process all over again and potentially contract for a new, less attractive project.

Here are the types of risks we track on the PPA deals we support, and the questions we ask to assess the risk level.

Category Description of Risk Questions to Ask
Site Control Developer fails to acquire site needed for the project and the grid tie-in Has the site been acquired for both the project itself and the grid tie-in (incl. permissions and mineral rights as needed)?
Interconnection Project does not receive approval or must pay higher costs to connect to the grid What is the current status of interconnection?

What is the expected interconnection timeline, and is it reasonable with the queue placement?

How does it compare to the overall project timeline?

Is project developer projecting reasonable interconnection upgrade costs? Who is taking the risk of that cost projection being wrong?

Project Studies Key studies indicate fatal flaws of the site Which studies of the project site have been completed (e.g. wildlife, wetlands, cultural)?

Which still need to be done?

What are the findings of the studies conducted to date?

Permitting Developer fails to acquire necessary permits for the site Which local, state, and federal permits are required for the project?

What is the status and likelihood of obtaining each?

Community Support Project fails to obtain community support needed for key permits and incentives Has developer engaged (positively) with community to date?

Does project have support of the nearby community?

Financing Project fails to obtain upfront financing for construction Does the developer need to raise 3rd party financing to build this project?

Is the project ‘financeable’?

Project Equipment Procurement Developer fails to procure equipment on time to meet the commercial operation date and receive tax credits What is the status of project equipment procurement?

Are tax credits secure (i.e. safe harbored)?

Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Issues prevent third party construction of project Has the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor already been secured?

What is the timeline?

What is the capability and experience of the contractor?

Risky Markets in the US

MISO Interconnection Delays and Cost Overruns

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) is the grid region that spans several states in the Midwest and Southern U.S. from Louisiana to Minnesota.

The process to receive an interconnection agreement in MISO is nearly a year and a half, but in some recent examples, the process has fallen behind this timeline by over a year. There’s currently ~70,000 MW of active RE in the MISO interconnection queue, but given significantly increasing upgrade costs and cost allocations, recent cycles have led to as much as 60%+ of projects dropping out of the queue.

Buyers looking at MISO (and a growing list of ISOs) should know that early-stage projects are susceptible to schedule delays and cost overruns. In order to raise concerns with developers or solution providers, buyers need to understand:

  • The interconnection position and risk of the project of interest
  • How certain the project’s cost estimates are for network upgrades and who takes the risk if those estimates are incorrect
  • How the project interconnection position syncs up with other key RE project deadlines (e.g., tax credit deadlines)

ERCOT Basis Risk

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is the grid region that covers most of Texas.

Recently in ERCOT, a newly implemented grid stability focused, market-based mechanism (i.e., the West Texas Export Generic Transmission Constraint) negatively impacted certain western Texas RE projects and effectively lowered the project node prices received. Even if buyers already contracted for a hub-settled RE project in western ERCOT, many of these projects will now have difficulties raising financing. Some actions buyers can take include:

  • Potentially avoiding impacted projects in western Texas altogether but at least paying particularly close attention to these projects’ specifics, even if the settlement hub is outside of the region given the risk to the overall project
  • Understanding the project’s current construction financing plans and progress, particularly with tax equity investors
  • Outside of this specific issue, assessing the basis risk of the project (the difference between the settlement hub and project node prices) and addressing it in the RE contract. Basis risk will ultimately impact the project’s ‘financeability’

How to Avoid or Mitigate Risk

As mentioned previously, it is critical that buyers understand and evaluate RE project-specific development risks to increase their probability for success. How can buyers best mitigate these risks for their organization?

  • Become more familiar and conversant in project development risks, including time and location-specific ones like the examples included above.
  • Create a framework for evaluating and prioritizing development risks (if you do not know where to start, CustomerFirst Renewables can help).
  • During a buyer’s competitive process, ask questions on each RE project, using both written questions and interviews.
  • Request project documentation for review, including results of studies, proof of agreements, etc.
  • Get second opinions on project selection decisions as needed.

In some situations, we recommend prioritizing later stage development projects in buyers’ selection processes and selecting more experienced and/or better capitalized project developers who can either better mitigate against or weather the storm through the relevant development risks.

If you find these risks too difficult to navigate alone, bring in an experienced adviser. CustomerFirst Renewables is available to help you find the best path to renewable energy procurement and decarbonization.