New Jersey
Founded in 2005
Transformation Toward Storage
Soltage's strategic expansion into energy storage is both necessary and astute. Across the U.S., solar-only projects face increasing headwinds from saturated interconnection queues and grid stability challenges. By integrating storage, Soltage can create higher-value projects that offer grid services like capacity and ancillary services, making them more attractive to utilities and grid operators. Standalone storage provides a further avenue for diversification into pure-play grid infrastructure.
The company has made the right moves by investing in specialized leadership with deep storage and microgrid expertise. Its focus on developing battery systems in dense urban areas represents a smart, high-value niche strategy that plays to its strengths in navigating complex distribution-level projects. Nonetheless, execution risk remains. Energy storage is a more technically and commercially complex asset class than solar. The successful commissioning and operation of its first standalone storage project in New York will be a critical milestone and a key test of its capabilities in this pivotal growth market.
Active Project Pipeline
Project
46 STREET
Pre-Construction
53 AVENUE
Pre-Construction
2481 MCDONALD AVENUE
Pre-Construction
55 DRIVE
Operational
Background
Soltage represents a distinct archetype in the U.S. renewable energy landscape: an Independent Power Producer (IPP) born from a unique fusion of environmental conviction and financial pragmatism. Founded in 2005, the company has navigated nearly two decades of market volatility by maintaining a disciplined strategic focus and cultivating a leadership team with exceptionally deep and complementary expertise. Its history is not one of venture-backed hypergrowth, but of deliberate, methodical expansion, culminating in its current position as a well-capitalized, infrastructure-backed owner and operator of distributed energy assets.
The Genesis: From Conservation to Commerce
The founding narrative of Soltage is inextricably linked to the personal and professional evolution of its co-founder and CEO, Jesse Grossman. Unlike many founders who emerge from finance or engineering, Grossman began his career as a rainforest ecologist, driven by a mission to influence conservation and sustainability outcomes. Through fieldwork in Africa and Southeast Asia, he observed firsthand that well-intentioned conservation projects were often derailed by powerful commercial interests, such as the discovery of offshore natural gas deposits. This experience fostered a pragmatic realization: to effect meaningful environmental change, one had to harness the "strength, power, determinism of a business" for sustainability objectives.
This pivot led Grossman to pursue graduate studies at Yale University, where he could acquire the analytical toolkit of business and finance. It was within this academic incubator that Soltage was conceived. The company was founded in a business school class taught by David Cromwell, a professor with a 30-year career on Wall Street in private equity and venture capital. This mentorship provided Soltage with a rigorous foundation from its inception, encompassing business plan analysis, financial modeling, and market scoping. The company was launched to address a specific market failure of the mid-2000s: the mispricing of capital and risk for solar assets. At the time, capital markets perceived regulatory and contracting risks as being far greater than they ultimately proved to be, creating an opportunity for a specialized entity to bridge the gap between technology and finance. The company's core mission was, and remains, to ensure that capital cost is not a barrier to the widespread implementation of solar energy
Primary Market Focus
Soltage's market strategy is a case study in strategic discipline. In an industry replete with opportunities across various technologies, geographies, and scales, the company has deliberately concentrated its efforts on a specific niche: the U.S. distributed generation (DG) market. This consistent, long-term focus has allowed Soltage to cultivate deep, defensible expertise in the complex regulatory and technical regimes that govern this segment, positioning it as a leader and a trusted partner for sophisticated capital providers.
The Distributed Generation Niche
Soltage operates as an IPP that develops, finances, and operates what it terms "distributed utility-scale" solar, solar-plus-storage, and standalone storage projects. This segment occupies a specific space in the market. Unlike large, transmission-connected utility-scale projects that can span thousands of acres, DG projects are typically smaller and interconnect directly to the local distribution grid. These systems generally have a capacity of 10 MW or less and serve a diverse customer base of commercial, industrial (C&I), municipal, and utility clients.
An analysis of Soltage's project portfolio confirms this focus. While it includes larger projects like the 15.3 MW Riley and Starvation sites in Oregon, the majority of its assets fall squarely within the 1 MW to 10 MW range, such as the 6.5 MW Wayne I project in North Carolina, the 5.6 MW Warren project in Massachusetts, and the 2.7 MW Pontiac project in Illinois. This project size allows the company to avoid some of the lengthy permitting and transmission challenges of massive utility-scale developments while still achieving economies of scale beyond smaller C&I rooftop installations.
The Community Solar Frontier
Within the broader DG landscape, Soltage has carved out a leadership position in the community solar sector. Community solar programs enable residential and commercial customers to subscribe to a share of a local solar farm and receive credits on their electricity bills, democratizing access to solar energy for those who cannot or do not wish to install panels on their own property.
Soltage’s strategy involves systematically penetrating states with supportive regulatory frameworks and deploying portfolios of assets at scale. This approach is evidenced by a series of targeted investments and policy engagements across the country:
Illinois: The company has been highly active in the burgeoning Illinois market, adding three new projects to its community solar portfolio in April 2023 and completing a 2.7 MW project in Pontiac in 2022.
New Jersey: In its home state, Soltage announced its first landfill community solar project in 2021, demonstrating an ability to develop on complex brownfield sites.
Delaware: Underscoring its role as a policy leader, Soltage hosted Delaware Governor John Carney for the signing of a landmark community solar bill in 2021, positioning the company with an early-mover advantage in the state.
Multistate Portfolios: The company frequently develops multi-state portfolios that include community solar offtakers, such as a 31 MW portfolio deployed in 2022 across South Carolina and Illinois.
Geographic Strategy: Targeted Depth
While Soltage has a national footprint with projects developed across more than 18 states, its geographic strategy is not one of diffuse expansion but of targeted concentration. The company leverages deep cross-country economic and policy knowledge to identify and enter high-impact markets that offer strong returns and opportunities for scaled deployment.
A review of its featured project list reveals significant operational clusters in key states, each with distinct policy drivers:
Massachusetts: A dense portfolio of projects (Palmer, Warren, Oxford, etc.) leverages the state's historically strong solar incentives, including the SREC and SMART programs.
Illinois: A growing number of projects (Cortland, Pontiac, Sandoval, etc.) capitalize on the state's robust community solar program established under the Future Energy Jobs Act and Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.
North Carolina: A cluster of 6.5 MW projects (Wayne I, Wayne II, Duplin) reflects a strategy built around the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which created a market for qualifying facilities to sell power to utilities.
Oregon: Several of the company's largest projects (Agate Bay, Fort Rock, Riley) are located in Oregon, indicating a successful penetration of the state's utility-scale DG market.
New Jersey: A solid base of projects in its home state takes advantage of long-standing solar programs.
This pattern of building regional density allows Soltage to master the localized nuances of interconnection, permitting, and policy, creating a significant barrier to entry for less-focused competitors.
The Emerging Storage Vector
Recognizing the evolving needs of the modern grid, Soltage is making a strategic and aggressive push into energy storage. This is not merely an add-on but a core component of its future growth strategy. The company is developing solar-plus-storage and, critically, standalone storage projects. This strategic shift is substantiated by the key hires of a CTO and an SVP of Storage Development, both of whom possess deep expertise in storage and microgrids.
Soltage is targeting a particularly high-value niche: developing battery storage systems in dense urban areas. These projects are designed to address growing demand on urban distribution grids, helping to unlock capacity, improve operational efficiency, and secure grid stability. As a testament to this strategy, the company is currently constructing its first standalone battery storage project in New York, a landmark development that will serve as a crucial proof-of-concept for its capabilities in this advanced asset class.
Financing & Company Backing
Soltage's capital history chronicles a methodical maturation from a developer reliant on a series of joint ventures and capital partnerships to a fully capitalized, long-term asset owner. This journey culminated in its 2023 acquisition by Igneo Infrastructure Partners, a transformational event that fundamentally altered its business model and solidified its financial foundation for the next decade of growth.
Capital Formation: A History of Strategic Partnerships
From its inception, Soltage demonstrated an ability to attract institutional capital. Its early backers included established investors like Prudential Capital Group, Tenaska, and Basalt Infrastructure Partners. For much of its history, the company employed a capital-efficient model centered on forming dedicated investment vehicles with large financial partners. This structure allowed Soltage to develop and construct significant portfolios of solar assets without carrying the full weight of long-term ownership on its own balance sheet, enabling it to recycle capital into new development opportunities.
Key partnerships that defined this era include:
Basalt Infrastructure Partners: Following the full deployment of its Hyperion capital vehicle, Soltage formed a successor partnership with Basalt to continue its investment activities, including a 28 MW solar portfolio investment in 2020.
Harrison Street: In March 2021, Soltage announced a landmark $250 million partnership with Harrison Street, a leading investment management firm focused on real assets. This vehicle, named "Iris," was created to fund 450 MW of new solar and storage projects across the U.S.. Under the agreement, the assets were to be jointly owned by the partnership, with Soltage serving as the operator. The Iris vehicle successfully deployed capital across multiple portfolios, including an initial 14.5 MW portfolio and subsequent 20 MW and 31 MW portfolios. The partnership also extended to Harrison Street's acquisition of the 28 MW Cincinnati Zoo project, which Soltage had advanced to financial close.
The Igneo Acquisition: A Transformational Event
In September 2023, Soltage's strategic evolution reached its apex with the announcement that Igneo Infrastructure Partners would acquire a majority equity interest in the company. Igneo, a global infrastructure investment manager with approximately $18 billion in assets under management, is the autonomous investment arm of the First Sentier Investors Group, a part of the global financial giant MUFG.
The transaction represented a successful exit for Soltage's prior investors, including Prudential Private Capital. Crucially, the deal was structured to ensure leadership continuity and alignment; CEO Jesse Grossman, CFO Sripradha Ilango, and other key members of the management team rolled over a portion of their holdings and retained significant ownership stakes in the company.
The strategic rationale for the acquisition is profound. It is explicitly designed to transition Soltage from its capital-recycling model to a full Independent Power Producer (IPP) business model. This shift provides Soltage with the patient, long-term capital necessary to build out its identified
1.9 GW pipeline of solar and storage projects and, most importantly, to own and operate these assets for their entire useful life. For Igneo, the investment marked a strategic expansion of its U.S. infrastructure portfolio into the high-growth distributed generation sector. This move from being primarily a developer to a true long-term owner-operator fundamentally elevates Soltage's position in the market, maximizing the value it can capture from each project and aligning its interests with those of a long-horizon infrastructure investor.
Debt Financing and Capital Structure
Alongside its success in raising equity and partnership capital, Soltage has a proven track record of securing significant debt financing to fund project construction and operations. This ability to access the debt markets is a testament to the quality of its projects and the stability of its contracted cash flows.
Recent notable debt facilities include:
July 2021: A $130 million debt facility led by Silicon Valley Bank, which was raised to finance a national portfolio of solar projects.
June 2025: A $260 million construction and term debt facility secured to accelerate the deployment of its clean energy pipeline. This large, recent facility underscores the increased bankability and financial strength of the company following the Igneo acquisition.
Traction and Market Position
Soltage has established significant market traction over its nearly 20-year history, translating its disciplined strategy into a substantial portfolio of operating assets and a proven track record of execution. The company's capabilities are best illustrated by its operational metrics and a series of marquee projects that highlight its ability to manage complex, multi-party developments and execute programmatic strategies in key growth sectors.
Operational Footprint: Key Metrics
As of early 2025, Soltage has achieved a notable scale within its chosen market niche:
Total Capacity: The company has over 500 MW of solar and storage assets under ownership and operation.
Project Count: It has successfully developed more than 125 individual clean energy projects across the United States.
Capital Deployed: Since its founding in 2005, Soltage has directed over $1 billion into clean energy infrastructure investments.
Geographic Reach: The firm maintains an active presence in 18 states, demonstrating its ability to navigate diverse regulatory environments.
Marquee Project Showcase
While the full portfolio is extensive, several key projects exemplify Soltage's strengths:
The Cincinnati Zoo Project (28 MW): This is a flagship project that showcases Soltage's role as a pivotal developer capable of orchestrating complex, high-profile deals. Soltage acquired the project from its initial developer, Melink Solar Development, and successfully brought it to financial close.
Harrison Street, was built by EPC contractor Inovateus Solar, and sells its power to the Cincinnati Zoo through power purchase agreements (PPAs) managed by Calpine Energy Solutions. Further highlighting its innovative approach, the project is an agrivoltaic site, utilizing sheep from a local partner, Ohio Solar Grazing, for vegetation management, which promotes soil health and deepens community integration.
Multistate Community Solar & PURPA Portfolios: Soltage has demonstrated a strong capacity for programmatic execution, developing and financing portfolios of assets across multiple states. Notable examples include:
A 31 MW portfolio spanning South Carolina and Illinois, with power sold to a mix of municipal, commercial, and residential community solar customers, as well as local utilities.
A 20 MW portfolio across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maine, serving both investor-owned utilities through PURPA contracts and corporate customers seeking to meet clean energy goals.
Innovative and Corporate Projects: The company's portfolio also reflects its versatility in project siting and customer acquisition. This includes the development of its first landfill community solar project in New Jersey, a key example of its ability to repurpose challenging brownfield sites for clean energy generation. It has also served major corporate clients, with projects for industrial leaders like Dow (3.7 MW in Massachusetts) and Sikorsky Aircraft (95 kW in Connecticut), proving its ability to meet the needs of sophisticated C&I offtakers.