Financing
Four ways to pay for it. We model all four and tell you which one wins.
Cash, commercial PACE, a power purchase agreement, or a lease. Very different consequences for your capital, your balance sheet and who keeps the tax benefits. We are not tied to a lender, so the recommendation is about your building, not our margin.
| Cash purchase | Commercial PACE (C-PACE) | Power purchase agreement (PPA) | Lease | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital required from you | All of it, up front | None up front | None | None or minimal |
| Who owns the system | You | You | The PPA provider | The lessor until buyout |
| Who keeps the tax credit and depreciation | You | You | The provider (priced into your rate) | The lessor (priced into payments) |
| How you pay | Once | A line on the property tax bill, up to 20–30 years | A fixed price per kWh for 15–25 years | A fixed monthly payment |
| Balance-sheet treatment | Owned asset | Assessment on the property; typically transfers on sale | Operating expense | Depends on structure — capital or operating |
| Best when | You have the capital and the tax appetite to use the credit | You want ownership without capital and the building will hold the assessment | You want zero capital and zero operating responsibility | You want ownership eventually with predictable payments |
| Watch out for | Tying up capital; you need enough tax liability to use the credit | Lender consent on the mortgage; not available in every state or county | You give up the incentives; check escalators and buyout terms | Residual and buyout pricing; who carries maintenance |
General characteristics; terms vary by provider, state and property. Not financial or tax advice.
Why independence is the whole point
An installer who offers a PPA will recommend a PPA. A lender who writes C-PACE will recommend C-PACE. Neither is wrong, exactly; they are just answering a different question from the one you asked.
We run all four structures against your actual load, tariff, tax position and hold period, and show you the ten-year and twenty-five-year cash picture side by side. Sometimes cash wins by a mile. Sometimes the tax credit is worth more to a PPA provider than it is to you, and giving it up is the right call. The point is that you see the comparison before you sign anything.
Portfolio owners
Financing a portfolio
A portfolio changes the question. Instead of pricing one building, we structure once and draw against it site by site — a master PPA, a portfolio C-PACE program, or a single facility sized to the whole rollout.
The tax-appetite question — whether you can use the credit, or it's worth more to a provider — gets answered once, for all of it, instead of relitigated at every building. And because the sites come online in sequence, the early projects' savings can help carry the next.
We model the portfolio the way we model a building: all four structures, ten- and twenty-five-year cash, side by side — just aggregated.
How a portfolio program runs →