PearlX announced its first large-scale solar and storage installation since Antin Infrastructure Partners invested in a majority stake of the company in February. PearlX provides an innovative amenity solution that decarbonizes existing multi-family rental properties and provides renters - including those who are middle-to-lower income - with cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy. Antin plans to invest over $100 million of new equity into the business over the next few years to support significant growth plans.

PearlX’s first large-scale installation since Antin’s investment is at High Desert Villas, a 232-unit senior community in Victorville, California, with over 700 kW of solar power installed on the property’s rooftops, and 314kWh of paired battery storage. Image Credit: PearlX

High Desert Villas – bringing large-scale community solar + storage to renters 

The first large-scale installation since Antin’s investment is at High Desert Villas, a 232-unit senior community in Victorville, California, with over 700 kW of solar power installed on the property’s rooftops, and 314kWh of paired battery storage. PearlX’s innovative community solar + storage and non-credit based financing model has received wide-acclaim for delivering a ‘win-win’ for all key stakeholders involved. PearlX entirely finance, develop and asset manage all installations from start to end, negating the heavy capex and human resource drain owners often face when approaching solar projects for their communities. Property owner, Strata Equity Group, receives a mechanism to increases cash flows without increasing rent via lease payments from PearlX. Subscribing residents receive access to clean energy, savings on their utility bills, and resiliency benefits to protect against the impact of grid outages. On average, residents will have roughly 65% of their annual electricity consumption served by the installation. The local utility, SCE, also benefits by leveraging the excess power to help stabilize the grid during peak demand response events. 

Already delivering power to residents today, High Desert Villas marks one of the first distributed generation instalments in Southern California Edison (SCE)’s utility territory to provide renters behind-the-meter solar paired with storage. PearlX aim to serve over 25,000 California apartment renters by 2025, valued at $500 million of community-based capital investment. Strata and PearlX are early movers at scaling and growing the “Flexifornia” program to reach its full potential.

Michael Huerta, PearlX Co-founder and CEO commented: “Our landlord customers come to us to find solutions for increasing their NOI and cash profile, without increasing rents. They also ask us to provide amenities to increase benefits for residents, preferably outside of their maintenance CapEx budgets. We're able to provide this all, while tangibly improving the ESG performance of portfolios we partner with.”

Jeffrey Chan, Senior Asset Manager at Strata Equity Group, added: "It was great working with PearlX. They were very accommodating during the whole process explaining everything in detail and answering all of our questions. We’re excited the solar installation is now operational and not only providing clean energy to our community, but delivering energy bill savings to our residents."

Majority stake investment to support PearlX rapid scale-up across the US

Founded by Michael Huerta and Peter Mendonez, PearlX is the first mover of scale to provide smart grid infrastructure to the multi-family residential housing segment through a proven state-of-the-art solution combining rooftop solar panels and communal battery storage. While residential rooftop solar usage has increased in recent years, it remains largely limited to single-family homes and to higher income households. PearlX, however, provides entire communities of renters with access to low-cost clean energy and resiliency services. Landlords also benefit in several ways: including new income streams from leasing their “energy estate” to PearlX over a long-term period, offering PearlX’s energy solutions as an additional community amenity, and a reduction in the property’s carbon footprint.

Antin’s investment will be deployed to further scale up the PearlX team and platform, execute on a robust pipeline of solar and storage systems, and continue to expand electrification offerings to underserved multi-family rental communities in California, Texas and across the US. With households contributing approximately 20% of US carbon emissions, clean home electrification represents a significant decarbonization opportunity to reach the US’s 2050 net zero target. PearlX’s amenities will also advance federal and state initiatives like the US Inflation Reduction Act and California’s mandate for three million climate-friendly homes by 2030.

As the first US investment of Antin’s NextGen platform, PearlX joins a unique portfolio that includes SNRG, a UK-focused smart grid platform; two European electric vehicle charging platforms, Power Dot and RAW Charging; and a tire recycling joint venture with Scandinavian Enviro Systems and Michelin. 

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Rakesh Shankar, NextGen Partners at Antin stated: “PearlX fully aligns with NextGen’s mission of identifying and building tomorrow’s sustainable and connected infrastructure landscape. We look forward to working with the exceptional PearlX team to further these important goals.”

PearlX | https://pearlx.com/

Antin Infrastructure Partners | https://www.antin-ip.com/