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Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

legends.solar

31–40 of 167 posts

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#31
post #24

Really like the idea that you're making a bet on the commercial return of these panels. Obviously, it doesn't have the advantage of something like Net Energy Meeting, but that is only available in a few places anyway. To me, the most important thing would be assured that this investment truly creates new panel installations vs just being an arbitrage play on reselling existing solar capacity. Is there anything about…

This is high on our minds, as well. Particularly as we add dozens or hundreds of facilities, an important question will be how the investor chooses (they will likely all have similar economics).

For our first offerings, we will likely purchase existing facilities or contribute financing to new ones. Over time, we hope to select facilities where our member's additive benefit is more clear.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#32

This is basically a variation on the SolarCity business model, but focusing on commercial properties. There is probably a business here, but not one that tries to recruit individual investors because it will only be profitable at scale, and the kind of financial backing needed to do this is available to qualified teams. The recruiting individuals thing is basically an admission that this team does not have access to…

I see, your argument is that like (for instance) LendingClub, the economies of scale always favor large investors, and that this platform simply cannot get large investors onboard. That may be due to a lack of connections, or due to some other potential fundamental issues with the business model. At the end of the day if the business is sound it makes more sense to target fewer large investors - not many, smaller ones. If this model makes sense, it would probably just pivot like LendingClub and cut off access for small investors. And if not, small investors will be holding bag.

I buy that.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#33
post #2

Do these come from residential solar leases? does this count as commercial?

These will be commercial and utility scale solar facilities. We may get into residential in the future!

Show your work. Justify your ROI estimate.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#35
post #17

At the end of the day, it all comes down to ROI. If this had a good ROI, it probably already attracted enough investors without needing to create such a investment product. If not, then I might as well buy SP500.

This sounds false. Couldn’t you make the same argument about the entire stock market?

This doesn't apply to the stock market because the stock market is the alternate investment for retail investors.

But this does apply to most investments. Most investments that are looking for retail investors are scams. If they delivered ROIs better than or as good as the S&P they'd attract large sophisticated investors.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#36

The math here is pretty straightforward, however, it doesn't look like all of the components necessary to do the math are available. 1. How long do I "own a solar panel"? Indefinitely? 2. What is the wattage of the solar panel and where is it located? i.e. what wattage will it produce consistently YoY? What power market? 3. What percentage fees does Legends take? Frankly, #1 is the most important factor here by a lon…

(2) is critically important as well. A panel is going to do differently in Texas than Maine.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#37

At the end of the day, it all comes down to ROI. If this had a good ROI, it probably already attracted enough investors without needing to create such a investment product. If not, then I might as well buy SP500.

It might be useful to think of Legends Solar panels as a kind of fixed income security. It depreciates over time but produces a steady stream of dividends. Significantly lower risk than the stock market, but with somewhat predictable returns.

The important thing we hope to capture is the experience... it'll feel much more like owning a consumer product than an investment.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#38
Potentially interesting idea, but the founding team doesn't inspire a lot of confidence: https://www.legends.solar/v2-the-team

One "product designer", one former art gallery manager, and one embedded engineer with a couple years of experience.

Advisors include another "product designer", someone who describes themselves as a "storyteller film maker", and someone in the solar financing space. At least there's one person in here with semi-related solar financing experience.

Of course, it's entirely possible for a scrappy team like this to execute on a startup if they can get all of the right pieces aligned. I do get skeptical when the founding team and advisors have more "designers" than doers, though. Seeing the founder have "summer design associate" as a title within the past few years doesn't really inspire confidence in a capital-intensive solar company.

Would love to see them succeed! However, I would need to see some proof that they can execute before I'd even consider touching this. This is the kind of business where you lose any claim to your solar panels the second they go out of business, and many lenders are happy to prey on those scenarios.

The numbers on their example page also raise a huge red flag that they don't seem to understand the economics at all: https://www.legends.solar/get-early-access $250 as an estimated investment for a panel they show as 350W is way below the installed cost that anyone is pulling off right now. I'm guessing they picked random numbers to collect interest to fundraise with, not from actual models.

Honestly, I'd much rather see a corporation set up as a publicly-traded company that builds solar installations and pays out a dividend to investors. That keeps investors aligned with the company and maintains their claim over the installations. The way this is set up feels like it's designed to strip rights from individual retail investors by funneling their investment through the platform while someone else owns the company.

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#39

At the end of the day, it all comes down to ROI. If this had a good ROI, it probably already attracted enough investors without needing to create such a investment product. If not, then I might as well buy SP500.

One interesting thing I found is that there is a downward trend for electricity prices (adjusted for inflation) for the last 40 years so it doesn’t seem like there’s no future growth:

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-...

Re: Legends Solar – Buy operating solar panels on commercial solar farms

#40
post #18

I thought this was going to be about solar panels installed synergistically on food farms, running more efficiently because of the lower temperature, and increasing farm yield by reducing heat and water stress on the plants. (Most plants can turn only a fixed maximum of photons into sugar, daily, easily exceeded in an hour or three of full sun, with exposure after just endured.) There is a clever form of this where t…

Why would you think that natural photosynthesis is worst then artificial one?

I don't think it's "worse" is the intention, but rather that we need electricity as well as photosynthesis, and combining the two effectively is efficient for us. And now "it from bit" rears its beautiful head.
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