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A Guide to Solar Surety Bonds

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What Are Solar Surety Bonds? All surety bonds required in conjunction with the permitting, construction, operation, or decommissioning of a solar generating facility fall into the broad category of solar surety bonds.  Solar surety bonds are a form of financial security used to mitigate risk in the solar energy industry. They are an alternative to letters of credit, cash deposits, and other ways to protect the financial interests of project owners and government entities—federal, state, or local—related to various phases of a solar generating facility’s life cycle. Each solar surety bond is a legally binding contract among three parties: the “obligee” requiring the bond, the “principal” purchasing the bond, and the “surety” guaranteeing the payment of valid claims against the bond. Solar Surety Bonds have certain advantages over other types of financial security. The main advantage from the principal’s standpoint is that a surety bond does not require a large initial outlay of cash or tie up the principal’s...

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What Is a Power Purchase Agreement?

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your bonding needs. See more about purchase power agreements here. What Is a Power Purchase Agreement? Power purchase agreements are bilateral (2-party) contracts allowing customers to purchase energy and renewable energy certificates from a renewable energy supplier generating either solar or wind energy. A PPA allows a third party developer to install, own, and operate an energy system on property owned by a customer. The seller produces or generates power for sale. The buyer is the “offtaker” of that power. There are a number of ways in which PPAs can be configured. Some deals involve the actual physical delivery of energy. Some do not. Virtual or remote PPAs don’t involve a physical delivery of energy to the buyer. In more than half of the states in the country, PPA provides a way to finance energy projects in the absence of government subsidies. The renewable energy supplier can charge a fixed price, which yields a guaranteed ROI with minimum risk. These contractual agreements typically...

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Solar PPA vs. Lease

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What’s the Choice? Many people have reached the point where their choice is not whether to acquire solar energy capability but rather how to acquire it. Solar power purchase agreements (PPAs), and lease arrangements are the two options that do not involve the actual purchase of a solar energy system by a property owner. The need to choose between a solar PPA and a solar lease only arises when the property owner has concluded that purchasing a solar system outright or financing the purchase of a solar system is not feasible. That usually has more to do with the property owner’s credit history and financial stability than with any technical matters. And owning a solar system may not make sense for those whose tax liability is so low that they are not incentivized by the 30% investment tax credit (ITC) or other tax benefits derived from solar energy system ownership. Assuming that purchasing or financing a solar system is...

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A Guide to Decommissioning of Solar Sites

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. Why Is a Decommissioning Plan Needed? In most jurisdictions, a project owner applying for a permit to construct a solar generating facility must provide a decommissioning plan. Without a decommissioning plan, these jurisdictions will not issue a permit in the first place. Decommissioning a solar generating facility includes dismantling the equipment and returning the site to its original condition, may involve tasks including: Removing rack wiring Removing panels Dismantling racks Removing electrical equipment Breaking up and removing concrete pads or ballasts Removing racks Removing cables Removing ground screws and power poles Removing fencing Transporting materials from the site Grading the site Seeding/replanting disturbed areas There are costs associated with these tasks. What Does a Decommissioning Plan Include? A decommissioning plan typically is developed by, or at least reviewed by, a qualified engineer and includes such information as: The anticipated useful life of the solar generating facility to be constructed The estimated cost of decommissioning in terms of present value...

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Solar Bond Demand Goes Up

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. Is the Demand for Solar Energy Still Growing? Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that the demand for solar energy has been increasing steadily and, with the incentives created by recent legislation, is poised for explosive growth. One sure benchmark for growing demand for solar power in the residential market is the increasing popularity of solar bonds as an investment vehicle. These are financial securities, debt instruments, backed by loans made by financing companies—not to be confused with solar surety bonds (more on those in a minute).  Investors are buying up solar bonds because they view the growth of the solar energy industry as an attractive investment opportunity with excellent potential for profit. Drivers of Solar Energy Demand For a long time, demand for solar energy was primarily the result of concerns about the environmental impact of emissions from burning fossil fuels. Now, there also are substantial financial incentives for moving toward electricity generated from...

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Community Solar Subscription Management Surety Bonds

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What Is Community Solar? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, community solar is “any solar project or purchasing program, within a geographic area, in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups.” Typically, the energy producing those benefits is being generated by solar panels at an off-site array. Community solar customers have the option of buying or leasing a subset of the solar panels in the array and receiving a credit on their electric bill for the power generated by those panels. Not everyone can have solar panels installed on their own roof, usually because they are renters rather than homeowners, or because their home is not well situated in terms of exposure to sunlight, or because of the design or size of their roof, or for financial reasons. Community solar allows these folks to participate in and benefit from solar energy generation, nonetheless. There also are...

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Remote Construction Management Trends

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your bonding needs. Continue reading to learn more about remote construction management trends. For a very long time, construction management meant spending all day on a single job site or traveling from one site to another to check on progress and stomp out small fires before they could become big ones—not exactly an efficient approach to project management. In an industry slow to embrace digital technologies, it only became widely apparent that the physical presence of a project manager onsite might not be necessary when the pandemic turned the way Americans work upside down. Increasingly, digital technologies used to improve construction processes are being deployed as project management tools, and many construction project managers spend far less time onsite than previously was thought necessary. Top Remote Construction Management Trends Digital Time Tracking At the most basic level, construction project management is about making sure that people show up to work when and where they’re supposed to and remain as long as they are...

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Protective Gear: Construction Trends

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your bonding needs. Continue reading to learn more about protective gear construction trends. The range of protective gear (personal protective equipment, or PPE) available for use in the construction industry continues to expand with new developments in PPE technology and enhanced safety requirements imposed by government entities, employers, project owners, and insurance companies. The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the need for additional PPE (for example, N95 masks) to help in disease prevention when infection rates are high. Top Protective Gear Construction Trends Fit and Comfort Proper fit plays a big part in the effectiveness of construction protective gear. There is a direct correlation between the comfort of PPE and compliance with rules and regulations regarding the use of PPE. Comfort goes hand-in-hand with fit as PPE design criteria because workers may not wear PPE properly or adjust the fit properly if the item is uncomfortable. So, there is ongoing research and development to come up with PPE that can be adjusted for...

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Construction Recruitment Trends

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your bonding needs. Continue to read to find out more about construction recruitment trends. The Current Labor Shortage The demand for new workers in the construction industry has been greater than the potential supply for years, and that trend continues in the COVID-19 era. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Construction activity was stagnant through most of 2021 but is likely to pick up with government-funded infrastructure spending. To be competitive moving forward, construction companies need to acquire and/or develop talent that has the right combination of skills for the work to be done. They also need to have a diverse workforce that is in line with what both private and public project owners are looking for. And they need to be able to attract and retain workers in a highly competitive hiring environment. The Right Mix of Skills Generations of construction workers were hired for their technical skills and experience. But there is a growing recognition of the need for...

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