Solar Siting Checklist: What Lenders Actually Underwrite
Every solar developer I've met has a war story about a project that looked great on paper—until the lender's engineer started asking questions about the site. The soil report was fine. The solar resource was above average. But the interconnection queue had a 4-year wait, and the landowner wouldn't sign a 30-year lease because the property was in a floodplain that the bank's environmental consultant flagged. The deal died quietly. This checklist is for project developers, EPCs, and independent power producers who want to avoid that fate. It's built from the actual underwriting criteria that commercial banks, tax equity investors, and independent engineers use when they evaluate a utility-scale siting package. We'll walk through the decision frame, compare three siting approaches, lay out a side-by-side comparison, and give you a practical path to financial close. No hype—just the siting realities that get projects financed.