Let's talk about buying land and lease for solar development

[Yi C.]

I have been checking into this idea - find vacant land, determine it's general suitability, find developer and sign the option to lease. I found there's not too much people talking about this idea here so I want to open this topic. I'd like to share some of my thoughts and hopefully I can get useful insights and connection with more people in the forum.

Just to disclose - I am not a professional in solar industry and I might be wrong. So please take my words with grain of salt.

1. Solar farm land lease is generally very profitable, provided you find right place, right price and it went through. That's why many farmers/landowners are willing to sign the lease. Plus the developer will take care of maintenance. You don't have to worry about plumbing, bad tenants, fixing issues. 

2. However, solar farm also come with huge risk in development. What I heard is about 50%+ of the option will not go through. There are many things we can't control even if we did our best due diligence. That's why developers sign the option with landowner, so they can leave if things go wrong. This should definitely put into consideration and have some exit strategies if it failed. 

3. As of now, many potential sites were either identified by broker/developer or too expensive to acquire. However if you are lucky you might still find some places suitable for solar farm and yet to be noticed, especially after the increased interest in community solar. It allows smaller lots to be considered. Here are some factors to be considered.

Interconnection - This is a very deep topic and biggest risk to the project. That's where you might find information about "distance to substation" and "capacity". You can try to check if utility companies have such information to help you understand the the site. However sometimes these information might not be correct and you should really do your DD on this. Exception happens (for example, a project built miles away from substation) but in general you'd like to maximize the chance to success and best to avoid the risk factors.

Land - Generally it should be at lease 20 acres. But it will be complicated by different factors such as flood zone, topology, conservation area, easements, access to roads and more.

Zoning - check the code and check site zoning. Also you can check if the place has additional requirement to solar farm construction.

Policy - Federal grants, state grants, policies. Does the state allow community solar? Is there incentive/grants available for this site?

There are things I didn't mention such as process of buying land, negotiating the lease, insurance. I will leave these topics later if I got chance and focusing on project development here. Overall I would treat this investment as a high risk gamble and willing to accept loss if it failed but It's also a very interesting process to understand how the industry works.