With solar hardware costs dropping and energy demand increasing, solar has experienced an incredible average annual growth rate of 22% in the last decade alone. With all that growth, one thing remains true: Installations happen - or don’t - based on the availability of financing.
The traditional financial challenge
In the commercial sector, landlords who want solar traditionally work with consultants and that charge upwards of £25,000 for a feasibility assessment of each building, which usually ends up with a recommendation to right-size the installation to the needs of the on-site tenant. The landlord takes this recommendation to a developer, whose built-in soft costs easily bring average installations to £900-1000 per kWp.
To cover these up-front costs, landlords need to seek capital from their balance sheet or as a loan at hopefully advantageous terms. With this additional cost, landlords must pass costs on to the tenant as a higher on-site tariff. This is where deals often dead-end, without a single electron generated.
Another path with InRange
InRange fundamentally changes the way commercial landlords adopt solar & storage. InRange is not a consultant or a developer - it's an energy procurement platform that provides an end to end, free to use, automated journey. InRange instantly gives landlords and tenants feasibility studies and financial offers for their entire portfolio, focusing them on highest-value sites.
InRange uniquely maximises install size, exporting all excess generation to nearby buildings on the InRange network at fixed export tariffs. Utilising our network of EPC partners for installation and maintenance, cost per kWp drops to only £650-750, and these savings and additional revenues translate to lower on-site tariffs, saving tenants up to 25% on their energy bills. InRange’s model is to take a revenue share on energy sold, so there's zero up front cost.
Sounds great, but what about financing?
While usage of the platform is free, there's still the topic of paying for hardware, installation, and operations and maintenance (O&M). InRange gives landlords the flexibility of 2 options:
Lease: Landlords invest £0 of their own money. InRange finances the solar from A to Z - even including grid connection and insurance. In this option, landlords take zero risk, and can generate significant revenue while saving their tenants money and enhancing the value of their asset. In Lease, InRange gets the larger portion of revenue share, and it’s a great choice for landlords who prefer to invest their capex elsewhere, or are unsatisfied with their financing terms.
License: Landlords pay for all the points above, and maintain complete ownership of the asset. The platform’s free feasibility study presents a financial model that shows IRR, revenue, payback period, and a complete cash flow projection that landlords can take to their investment committee. In License, landlords get the larger portion of revenue share. InRange still manages everything, the only difference is the source of the capex. Landlords choose this when ownership of the asset is important to them, or when they want to enjoy the return on their investment (average 10-15% IRRs).
Regardless of lease or license:
The underlying financial model is the same. IRR and revenue breakdown is either the landlord’s or InRange’s - we only offer a deal that’s so good that we would take it ourselves. In that regard we are also doing the underwriting of the financial offers: It passes our own IC, and will pass yours.
We ensure all contracts are set up such that the building, and installation, can be sold when the landlord is ready to do so, without additional risk.
The value for your tenants
Commercial tenants are keen to save money on energy and improve their carbon footprint, and this is becoming table stakes for maintaining long-term tenancy. While landlords may opt for lease or license, regardless of model, tenants enjoy the same cost reduction and emissions benefits. InRange’s end to end energy procurement platform reduces both time and cost to deliver value to both tenants and landlords, strengthening their relationship.
InRange is creating a new energy asset class from the built environment, unlocking new revenue streams for landlords and saving energy costs for tenants. InRange provides guaranteed 10-year fixed export tariffs, selling surplus energy to buildings within their network through the InRange Marketplace. InRange’s AI-powered platform simplifies feasibility studies for quicker, more efficient and cost-effective assessments, empowering landlords to make faster, more accurate decisions across a portfolio.