Growing Toronto-based solar and energy storage developer Nexus Renewables Inc. will be the first piece in forging a nationwide U.S. solar developer platform, according to the executive chairman of its majority owner Apricus Generation.

Having announced in May it acquired a majority stake in Nexus, Miami-based power producer Apricus will look to an ultimate goal of buying “two or three developers to create that national platform,” Gautam Chandra, also the co-founder Apricus, told Sustainable Biz Canada in an interview.

To meet this ambition, Apricus will pour in funding from an overcommitted US$100M Series A funding round (all dollar figures US), plus an investment from Aiga Capital Partners’ $240-million climate infrastructure fund.

Though based in Canada, Nexus has most of its projects in the U.S., such as an in-development 300-megawatt (MW) battery energy storage system (BESS) in Texas. A handful of smaller Canadian projects were flipped to other companies earlier in its history.

How Nexus is funded

Chandra, an energy industry figure with decades of experience, said Apricus marks the "2.0 version" of his career.

His background in the renewables industry dates back to 2009, when he started a solar energy business as part of WGL Holdings Inc. that grew to $1 billion in assets by 2016. He later founded SmartPitch Ventures in 2019, which took a controlling interest in two U.S. commercial solar developers then exited the investments in 2022. In 2020, he founded SolaReit, a solar land financing company.

Unlike his previous business, in which SmartPitch owned develop-and-flip companies, Apricus will do the developing while also owning and operating the commercial and community solar and battery storage developments.

Nexus was chosen as “the first part of that strategy,” because of its team, pipeline, having the kind of assets Apricus prefers, and being a company “that wants to be ultimately not just a develop-and-flip developer, but a develop-and-own-and-operate developer,” Chandra said.

Aiga, a mezzanine capital provider which funded Nexus in 2023, is “instrumental” to the Texas BESS project, Chandra said. Aiga may help with funding the construction of future projects, he continued.

Chandra would not disclose how much of the Series A will go to Nexus.

The U.S. is Nexus’s market because of the abundant support programs for clean energy, Chandra said. Overall, the U.S. offers more opportunities than Canada, including the Inflation Reduction Act he said Nexus will tap into.

This view was mirrored by Nexus’ CEO Keith Sandor, who agrees there are more opportunities for the company in the U.S. in 2023. But like Sandor, who said Nexus may also eventually develop in Canada because of increasing federal support, Chandra believes “there is no reason why we wouldn’t be active (in Canada).”

Elevating Nexus to a national player

The capital flowing into Nexus is enough to realize a solar and BESS project pipeline of over 500 MW in the U.S., Chandra said.

The projects include utility-scale Texas BESS projects in advanced development stages totalling 160 MW of capacity, a California BESS under construction, and community solar projects in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts.

When the pipeline reaches the notice-to-proceed phase and further to construction financing, more tax equity and mezzanine capital will be raised.

Apricus’s goal is to build a portfolio of solar and battery projects numbering in the gigawatts of capacity over the years before it exits the assets, Chandra said.

More financing announcements and milestones for projects will be announced in the coming months, and Apricus is working on a second acquisition to complement Nexus, Chandra added.

“With Nexus and with the other developers that we plan to tuck in with Nexus, our goal is to obviously realize our existing pipelines, bring that into operation — and that requires quite a bit of construction financing, tax equity – that’s really what Apricus is going to be focused on.”