November 21, 2022
Sulus Solar is a growth firm positioned out of Portland, Oregon and was arrange in 2017 by Conor Grogan, Co-Founder & Director of Sulus Solar, and his fellow Irishman Colin Murphy.
Conor’s training is in Mechanical Engineering, the place he discovered his first publicity into the renewable energy house in a thesis in Urban Wind Energy Applications. That spurred him to do a Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Engineering at Queen Mary University of London. This course was in its second yr of providing and was one in every of only a few renewable energy particular programs obtainable in Europe on the time.
Conor discovered a possibility in London to do a three-month internship in Seville, Spain, as a part of the Leonardo da Vinci program. There he joined Isotrol, a distant monitoring platform with presence in Spain and Italy. The platform’s software program monitored solar and wind tasks and knowledgeable asset house owners as to challenge efficiency, sending out alarms upon system failures in order that Operations and Maintenance Teams might reduce downtime. As a bilingual in English and Spanish; Conor specialised in selling the software program to English shoppers.
He then made the shift throughout city to Quintas Energy. Also Headquartered in Seville, Quintas Energy is without doubt one of the largest Asset Management firms in Europe. At the time they had been eager about creating tasks within the burgeoning English market and Conor was introduced in to steer. After 2 years in sunny Spain, Conor moved to the cooler climes of Brighton the place he joined up-and-coming OST Energy, a Technical Advisory firm began by ex-Mott MacDonald Engineers. There, Conor discovered methods to do Due Diligence on tasks, portfolios and gear for buyers and banks financing actions within the UK Market. Conor discovered lots there: entrepreneurship and crew constructing from the founders, challenge financing, solar engineering and loved travelling lots to go to websites round Europe and factories in China. He then moved again to Ireland the place he joined BNRG Renewables, one in every of Europe’s main builders. It was there that Conor first encountered challenge growth and personally oversaw the late-stage growth and building of over £30 Million kilos value of tasks within the south of England.
During this time, Conor accomplished a Master of Science in Renewable Energy Finance, aiming to equip himself with a well-rounded view on methods to materialize tasks from a growth and funding perspective.
It was there that he met Colin Murphy, a fellow Engineer specializing in challenge finance in a London-based non-public fairness agency. Together they moved to Portland in 2017 to arrange Sulus Solar with Oregon’s aggressive 50% by 2040 Renewable Portfolio Standard in thoughts. They determined to concentrate on early-stage growth, not a typical transfer for newcomers to the nation. PURPA tasks within the Portland General Electric territory was their first enterprise technique, they usually efficiently exited their first portfolio inside 48 months of beginning enterprise, promoting to Enerparc Solar primarily based in California (now Adapture Renewables).
They had been buoyed by the incoming Oregon Community Solar program and tailored their subsequent PURPA designed tasks to be eligible for the primary providing of the scheme. Their second portfolio was a mixture of PURPA and the primary ever Community Solar tasks within the state, which they exited in 2020. Their third portfolio was a primarily Community Solar providing, a few of which had been the primary ever tasks to get allowing of their respective counties. This portfolio was bought to Solriver, a really profitable developer primarily based in Denver, Colorado.
Conor is proud to have efficiently transferred his expertise in Europe to the U.S. market. Sulus Solar has a monitor file of creating and facilitating over $100 million value of tasks both in operation or very quickly to be as of time of publishing. Conor and his crew intend to proceed this upward trajectory and have spent a lot of 2022 restructuring the enterprise to permit for a much more appreciable funding quantum to be invested within the U.S. solar market over the subsequent 5-10 years.
Have you checked out our YouTube web page?
We have a ton video interviews and extra content material on our YouTube web page. Recently we debuted Power Forward! — a collaboration with BayWa r.e. to debate larger stage business subjects in addition to greatest practices / tendencies for operating a solar enterprise immediately.
Our longer operating facet challenge is The Pitch — wherein we now have awkward discussions with solar producers and suppliers about their new expertise and concepts in order that you do not have to. We talk about every part from residential rail-less deck attaching and home solar financing to large-scale energy storage worth stacking and utility-driven new home solar + storage microgrids.
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