By Bryan Birsic, Wunder Capital
Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that investment opportunity in the solar energy market through 2040 is approximately $2.8 trillion. Much of that investment will come from governments and institutions. However, one firm, Wunder Capital, is allowing individuals to take part in the solar energy revolution by supporting small and medium sized businesses and nonprofits as they make the transition to solar energy.
The massive growth seen in the solar energy sector over the last few years has been primarily driven by project economics. Solar is now cost competitive with traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas and has achieved a remarkable cost decrease of ~10% annually for the last 40 years (see Chart 1).
Even though the cost of solar is now competitive with other energy sources in many U.S. states, the upfront cost for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as nonprofits is still prohibitively expensive (with an average system cost of a few hundred thousand dollars). Because of this the commercial solar sector has grown much more slowly when compared to the residential and utility solar sectors (see Chart 2).
Wunder Capital’s mission to help fix that. By providing simple, cost effective financing solutions to qualified borrowers across the U.S. to help them go solar, and save money each month on their energy bills. Wunder Capital has a network of 155+ solar installers and developers across 30 states who send them projects to review on a weekly basis.
To date Wunder Capital has completed over 200 solar financings across the United States. Wunder’s 2017 Year-in-Review includes some impressive stats.
None of Wunder’s solar loan portfolios have suffered any losses or write-offs, meaning that investor’s projected returns have been met. Wunder Capital has two funds currently available for investors. The Wunder Income Fund and Wunder Capital 5 are shown in Chart 3.
Wunder’s newest fund, Wunder Capital 5, was launched last October, and has raised over $20 million. Wunder has achieved record project pipeline numbers in the last several months, with over $110 million in commercial solar projects in October alone (see Chart 4).
Here’s a quote from a current Wunder investor, and his experience thus far with Wunder Capital.
“I liked the market space Wunder looked to serve,” said Skip Larson. “Solar is but one of the many great ideas to keep literal energy flowing through the economy while leveraging established infrastructure and resources. The missing piece seemed to always be financing a long term investment in an economy built on short term results. Wunder spoke to this well and I bought in.”
This is a sponsored post from Wunder Capital. Wunder is a financial technology company that is based out of Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 2013, Wunder won the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2014 Sunshot Challenge, as well as COSEIA’s 2015 Summit Award. Wunder also participated in the Techstars technology accelerator program. Although Wunder’s solar funds are capitalized by individual accredited investors, the parent company and the operator of each of Wunder’s solar funds — The Wunder Company — is backed by venture capital (from the likes of Techstars Ventures, Fenway Summer, and Fintech Collective as well as others). In April 2018 Wunder Capital raised $112 million from investors to further its mission of accelerating commercial solar growth.
Alison Walsh says
Sounds too good to be true??!! Can I invest &1,000 at a time & expect a rate of return of around 7%?