$33M of new solar income across 13 industrial properties

The Project

A leading institutional investment manager with a portfolio of over 1,000 properties sought to unlock the untapped potential to get new income from solar leases. While the prospect of generating new income and reducing carbon emissions was appealing, the complexity of ranking buildings, navigating policies, tenant structures, and inconsistent developer bids felt overwhelming. They had received unsolicited PDF proposals. Yet exploring a direct partnership with a developer raised further concerns about securing the best economic deal.

They engaged Lumen Energy as a trusted partner to guide the process. Among their many properties, Lumen pinpointed the ones with the most untapped value. Lumen provided system design so all providers bid on an apples-apples basis as well as transparent rankings based on quantitative and qualitative criteria for each market.

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The Results

With Lumen’s expertise, the investment manager launched a competitive bid process that uncovered lease price variability of up to 270%. After reviewing bids from 5 qualified developers, the asset manager chose $0-CapEx community solar roof leases for 13 properties, unlocking $1.7M in new annual income—or $33M over 20 years. Lumen streamlined the journey, driving price discovery and competition through its marketplace and delivering consistency through standardized lease agreements. By transforming a complex undertaking into a seamless and repeatable process, Lumen turned solar into a reliable revenue stream for the manager's portfolio.

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