Compressing the business development cycle: Applying stewardship design principles for commercial scale solar projects

摘要

Building on the success of its first large scale solar project in 2010, Secure Futures, LLC ('Secure Futures'), a US solar development company, developed its second large scale solar project in 2011, in nearly half the time and four times larger than the first. Secure Futures developed Virginia's first commercial-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) power project through a unique power purchase agreement with Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) for a 104 kW system on the EMU campus in 2010. The EMU solar project took 21 months to overcome a variety of legal, financial, regulatory and tax hurdles. The second project, developed in 2011 with Washington and Lee University (W&L) in Lexington, VA for 444 kW was completed in eleven months. The company applied sustainable value (Laszlo, 2008), collaborative advantage (Kanter, 1994), and stewardship design principles (Smith, 2010) in overcoming market barriers and compressing business development cycles. This case study highlights the principles that contributed to developing two milestone projects in succession that overcame market, regulatory and financial hurdles.