Data Centers, Wind Farms

[Shafi Noss]

I'm interested in learning more about investing in lesser known assets like data centers, wind farms and parking lots, particularly the development process. How can I learn more about them?

[Mason Moreland]

@Shafi Noss and @Alon Kostetsky

I am in the business of developing vineyards, but in my W2 work I help solar, wind, and oil & gas developers get off the ground (land leasing/acquisition, permitting, and environmental consulting).

Most small-to-mid-size solar companies are essentially flippers. They speculate by buying or leasing up prospective land along ideal transmission lines, develop an engineering plan and permit the facility, then flip the whole deal to a larger developer who will go on to construct it.

Then you have your larger operators (who I typically work with) who do everything end-to-end with the help of outside consultants and go on to operate the facility. I think there is actually a great opportunity to syndicate these developments. Right now most big operators are large private equity, extremely large private firms, or publicly traded/national energy companies.

The key takeaway here is the scale at which utility-scale solar and wind takes place. You are talking minimums of >2,000 acres with ideal sun/wind characteristics (hundreds of thousands in upfront leasing costs there), and millions or billions in construction costs. Wind especially. There is a reason you see more small companies flipping smaller projects! The big players with snatch some small to medium size projects up as well. Not saying it's impossible though, you just have to have the right team, enough capital, and some creativity.