P LU G G E D I N

10 11s

by Aaron Cook

SELLINGsolar

A West Texas Story

Long known for its oil and gas exploration, the drive through West Texas is dotted with oil der-ricks, natural gas drills and refin-eries. It’s an energy professional’s Disney World. And rightfully so. According to the U.S. Ener-gy Information Administration (EIA), Texas was the leading oil and natural gas producing state in the country in 2016 and 17. West Texas, however, is quick-ly becoming just as important for what’s above the ground, as what’s under it. Texas, for ex-ample, leads the nation in wind-powered generation. But, then there’s the sunshine. And lots of it. West Texas enjoys one of the country’s healthiest runs of days filled with sunshine each year.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) Texas already has 1,973.49 MW of solar installed. That places the Lone Star State 7th in solar generation nationally. All of that sunshine has grabbed the attention of entrepreneurs and solar developers, like Austin-based 7X Energy, Inc. (7X). A self-described innovation leader in utility-scale development, 7X Energy develops solar projects

for corporations, utilities, mu-nicipalities and cooperatives across the country. Most recent-ly, 7X jointly developed the 315 MW Phoebe Solar facility (by far the largest solar project in Texas) and Shell Energy North America is purchasing the power. How’s that for energy yin and yang.

But 7X Energy is taking that process one step further with its new SolarBlockTM product – something the company be-lieves will fundamentally changehow customers and their bro-kers procure renewable energy.I talked with Clay Butler, CEOand co-founder at 7X Energy,and the man who’s blazing thetrail for solar development andits procurement.

But, first things first. I had to know, what’s the meaning be-hind 7X? (I had my theories, but they were all wrong.)

“When we started the compa-ny, we operated without a for-mal name,” said Butler. “But as we grew, it became clear that our company culture was be-ing forged out of the desire to generate renewable, sustainable

energy. That’s when someone brought up the ancient Iroquois philosophy, called the Seventh Generation Principle. It suggests that the decisions we make to-day should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. We not only embraced that principle as a company, but believed it aligned with how we wanted to conduct business.”

When Clay graduated in 2006 with his J.D. from St. Mary’s Law School in San Antonio, he de-cided it’d be better for his career to specialize. So, for nearly a de-cade he built and ran a law firm that specialized in renewable en-ergy. During that time, energy deregulation in Texas wasn’t just getting off the ground, it was running full steam ahead.

“I was fortunate enough to work on the legal side of one of the first solar utility projects in Tex-as,” Butler added. “And after that first developer came another. Af-ter several years, when anybody wanted to start a solar project in Texas, they worked with our team. I would say 95 percent of the first solar developments came through our office.”

Seeking warmer temps and bluer skies this winter, I ventured out on the year’s first road trip to Marfa, Texas. Now, I’m fairly confident you haven’t heard of Marfa. I mean, why would you? This tiny town is nestled about an hour north of the US-Mexico border and boasts a population count that likely wouldn’t fill a Manhattan apartment complex.

But this remote part of Texas is packed with sun-filled, wide open sky adventure for the winter-weary. Marfa itself is known for its ghost lights (Texas’s version of the Northern Lights) and Hotel Paisano - where Hol-lywood legends Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean stayed while filming the silver screen movie, Giant. Venture out a little farther and you’ll discover the Terlingua ghost town, dip your toes in the Rio Grande, explore Big Bend State Park and gaze into the Milky Way from the Mac-Donald Observatory.

But to get to this soul-nourishing, stretch-your-arms-out-as-wide-as-you-want region of Texas, you have to be committed. Driving out of Dallas, it’ll take you just over 8-hours – a straight shot west on I-20, then south at Mo-nahans. (Travel tip: hit the bathroom in Monahans. Just trust me on this one). But the drive, just as much as the destination, is therapeutic.

s

“Our work spans from site acquisition and permitting to interconnection and engineer-ing across multiple states. And the depth of our experience enables us to steer clear of pit-falls that delay projects and drive up costs,” added Butler. “And while we have a large port-folio in Texas, we have many projects across the country.”

Back in May, 7X Energy announced it had finalized the contract for its Lape-tus Project in Andrews County, Texas. Pronounced “luh-peat-us”, the project is named in honor of the third largest natural satel-lite orbiting Saturn (all of 7X Energy’s projects are named after solar bodies). The 640-acre solar energy project has a power pur-chase agreement with Co-Serv Electric and Brazos Electric Power Coopera-tive, Inc. Brazos Electric is buying the energy on behalf of CoServ Electric for CoServ’s roughly 220,000 electric meters in North Texas.

“At 35 MWDC, the Lapetus project will be the largest solar project built for an electric coop-erative in the state of Texas,” Butler said. “We’re extremely proud of this project, not just for the scale of the project, but for the opportunity it gives us to introduce our new SolarBlocksTM

purchasing strategy to the market.”

Because solar generation is largely unpredict-able it’s been difficult - if not impossible - for a supplier to find a way to offer a fixed volume product for solar energy. As a result, custom-ers who want to include solar power in their portfolios must be willing to assume the vari-able production risk. That also has put a lot of pressure on energy brokers who are tasked with helping their clients meet their corporate

sustainability program, or simply ‘go green’ at a cost that makes financial sense.

7X Energy’s SolarBlocks purchasing strategy is tackling solar generation variability head on. “Historically, customers and energy brokers alike have had to accept the variable genera-tion risks associated with adding solar energy to their portfolios,” noted Butler. “I believe our

team has come up with the best solution for today’s mar-ket with our SolarBlocks pur-chasing strategy. And I don’t think it’s too bold to expect it to fundamentally change the way customers and brokers buy solar.”

SolarBlocks enable custom-ers to procure contractually guaranteed fixed blocks of energy produced from so-lar plants. The fixed blocks of solar, which can be fore-casted down to the 15-min-ute settlement interval, lock

in low energy rates during peak periods when electricity can be most expensive and remove the intermittent variability of delivered energy associated with traditional solar farms. Solar-Blocks can be purchased by not only electric cooperatives and utilities, but also corpora-tions in competitive retail electricity markets.

“I really do feel as though we’ve been trying to squeeze the proverbial square peg into a round hole,” quipped Butler. “Buying solar energy doesn’t have to be that difficult. We developed this procurement strategy – a block and index product – based on products that a lot of buy-ers and energy brokers are already familiar with. Essentially, we’re putting the intermit-tency risk of solar on us, rather than the buyer.”

Fortunately, you need only browse the com-pany’s website to see that the 7X Energy’s team of experienced solar experts is impressive.

P LU G G E D I N

1312 tents tents

Working on these projects allowed Clay to be involved with drafting the policies that were maturing in tandem with the growth of solar generation. “I think we take for granted a lot of the groundwork that had to be laid in those early stages of solar developments,” noted But-ler. “We worked closely with ERCOT on the policy side of the business. In fact, my col-league helped create some of the protocols for utility-scale solar projects that still exist today. We even helped draft some of the basic defini-tions associated with the growth of the solar generation industry.”

But Clay wasn’t just learning to juggle the poli-tics of solar. He was also paying attention to the factors that make a solar business success-

ful. “By 2012, we had done a lot of early-stage development for companies. We figured out how developers were siting land for their solar projects and what they needed to consider in order to be successful – like ease of transmis-sion, flood zones, congestion risk and injec-tion points. But the process for procuring real estate to build a solar farm was tedious.”

Ever the entrepreneur, Clay tackled the issue head on and built a software engineering team.

That was the birth of Smart Power MapsTM, an innovative software platform built specifically for siting and evaluating utility-scale solar de-velopment.

Clay’s engineering team eventually secured a grant from the Department of Energy and continued to build out the Smart Power Maps software that identified the best sites for solar farm development – in a matter of minutes, rather than months. By the end of 2015, Smart Power Maps had “sited” for solar developers over 3,000 MWs of projects across the coun-try. Clay and his team quickly realized they could site and develop their own solar projects and control many of the variables that were outside their purview as consultants. In 2016,

Clay made the decision to close his law firm and launch a development company.

He partnered with Scott Pryor, a long time so-lar developer, to start 7X Energy with a mis-sion to offer customers the lowest cost of elec-tricity available through utility-scale solar. By taking an agile approach to the development process, 7X is able to minimize costs and risks for its customers.

“I believe our team has come up with the

best solution for today’s market with

our SolarBlocks purchasing strategy.”

P LU G G E D I N

14 15

As CEO, Clay oversees business development, operations, and investor relations for 7X Energy, where he continuously pushes 7X to be an innovation leader in the energy in-dustry. For almost a decade before co-founding 7X in early 2016, Clay served as a man-aging partner of a leading law firm for renewable energy companies. There, he provided development support and legal services for over 5,000 MW of solar projects and 3,500 MW of wind projects around the world. During this time, Clay founded a company to build a software solutions platform to utilize Big Data analytics to streamline and accel-erate the utility-scale solar development process; that software functionality continues to expand and is now exclusively licensed by 7X.

“No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Mull over that quote for a minute. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Simple, right? Even pretty clever. Also 100% true.

And, believe it or not, it wasn’t a line from the latest Marvel movie franchise. It was a topic we focused on for a very long, very full week during my college philosophy course. And de-spite the fact that I felt trapped by a teacher straight out of an 80s movie economics class, there were some highlights – like talking about smart people who did a lot of their own thinking before Google or Siri started doing it for us.

by Aaron Cook

Their knowledge of the energy market is deep, their reach expansive. So putting the risk on their shoulders feels comfortable.

“We have policy experts. We have a price team. We have solar resource engineers. We have data scientists. We’re very methodical. We’re con-servative in our projections. We deliver more than we project. And we have alternate energy in the event of shortages. In other words, we’ve

exhausted every effort to make SolarBlocks the game-changer we expect it to be.”

But if all this seems too good to be true – if you’re thinking there’s no way you can sell solar using a block and index product off the number of days the sun will shine – I’ve got a great road trip planned through West Texas you can use to dis-cover that anything’s possible in Texas.