General Electric is a big and sprawling company that’s undergone some dramatic reorganizations over the past few years, particularly in its renewable energy, energy storage and grid edge business lines.
But over the past four years, amid these large-scale corporate changes, a small unit of GE has built a growing business around developing distributed solar and solar-plus-storage projects.
On Tuesday, GE announced it’s taking this business to a new stage, via a partnership and majority investment by asset management firm and heavyweight renewables investor BlackRock Real Assets.
The new company, named Distributed Solar Development, will be 20 percent owned by GE Renewable Energy and 80 percent owned by a fund managed by BlackRock. The business, which has been incubated within GE since 2012, will focus on commercial, industrial and public-sector customers.
Erik Schiemann, CEO of Distributed Solar Development and a veteran of various GE business units, said in an interview that the investment would allow the company to expand its current project development work — and, for the first time, own the projects it’s developing.
“What we specialize in at Distributed Solar Development is the origination, development, design, execution, building, and asset management of distributed solar and storage projects,” he said. Most of its projects to date have been behind-the-meter.
“BlackRock’s investment further advances our growth in that platform, allows us to take on new markets, and allows us to double down in the markets we’re currently successful in.”
And while the business hasn’t owned any of the projects it’s developed to date, that’s set to change with BlackRock’s investment. “The cash infusion allows us to participate as an owner of the assets,” he said.
BlackRock’s push into distributed energy resources
BlackRock Real Assets has primarily invested in utility-scale renewables, with $5 billion invested in over 250 wind and solar projects with a total generation capacity of over 5.2 gigawatts. But it has made moves into distributed-scale solar projects this year, including April’s undisclosed investment into small-scale solar project owner CleanCapital.
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