What are your thoughts on project financing role for renewable developers?
is the work itself interesting? how is the pay, career progression, and hours?
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All that you are asking for heavily depends on the company itself.
If the company has a good pipeline of projects in different stages of development and is backed by a large investor, you will receive pretty interesting experience and a fast learning curve working with different kinds of technologies (onshore/offshore, solar, power-to-x). Conversely, a small company won't give you such a wide range of expertise, and you will only be an expert in one technology.
Referring to my experience, I worked for a CEE-based company (with a 1.5+ GW portfolio), and my salary was four times the country's average. I worked 50+ hours per week and had a fast career progression thanks to a lot of projects. Additionally, I was involved in M&A projects.
As someone who has worked in project finance at developers and banks, I would highly encourage you to pursue the role if you are interested in renewable energy financing and investing. Working at a developer allows you to see at a much more granular level how renewable projects get developed and built. Project finance folks are typically involved at a pretty early stage in a project's development to provide guidance and support to the development team. If you are going to a utility scale developer, you will likely learn about permitting, interconnection, real estate, energy markets, and offtake contracts. You will also spend quite a bit of time modeling renewable projects, so will get plenty of excel experience. Once a project is ready to be built, you will likely be a key member of the team raising capital from banks and investors to finance the projects, which will entail building financial models, creating marketing materials, managing due diligence, and closing transactions. Hours will vary depending on if you are in the middle of closing a deal or not. If not, hours are probably 40-50 a week. If you are closing a deal, it could be up to 60-70. There is less of an expectation to work on weekends at a developer vs. a bank.
In terms of pay, it can certainly vary, but I would expect the following ranges (for utility scale developer):
In terms of company size, I wouldn't necessarily shy away from joining a smaller company. Some small developers are very strong. Also, at a smaller developer you will be given more responsibility faster and can move up the career progression ladder faster.
How do economics of the projects work for these developers? Are they typically joint ventures and they get promote? How is that usually shared with employees? What are typical waterfall structures and what is a typical project irr upon stabilization? Who are big project equity investors?
thanks!
Hi there - hope you're still active.
This is a good read. I've recently joined a utility-scale gentailer (generator / developer & retailing capability).
Because it is very large, I do get exposed to a lot of the things you mentioned, particularly working with different asset groups - mature (inc. gas/coal) and emerging tech, and as such I don't feel like it is a one-pony trick role (e.g: small developers that only just build solar or wind).
In these roles, I do find you're more skewed towards the 'asset technical/operating' side and ensuring the commercial/technical attributes are being maximised, as opposed to going to the nth level of nitty gritty financial engineering with capital structuring (not to say you don't as you still work with PF models and debt size, but won't have the sophistication like a bank).
Was that true in your case?
There are typically 2 types of developers.
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