ogether with Silta, CleanestCharge will explore decentralized finance as an option for funding the rollout of Electric Vehicle (EV) fast charging stations powered by solar storage within the United States.
The mission of CleanestCharge is to help scale up the adoption of clean transportation by ensuring the availability of fast and convenient charging service for EV drivers. CleanestCharge engineers, builds and operates holistic systems consisting of solar canopies, battery energy storage, and fast EV charging.
Now, CleanestCharge is looking to explore how the Silta solution can help it to direct DeFi towards the financing of fast EV charging station projects at various sites within the United States.
CleanestCharge generates its electricity from ‘free’ solar energy plus storage. This allows them to tackle the profitability issue which has been impacting the scalability of historical fast EV charging stations, such as utility or grid-powered stations.
“Since CleanestCharge electricity comes from ‘free’ solar plus storage, our operating expenses are kept low, consisting only of insurance and maintenance costs. This means that we can avoid costly interconnection time, electricity costs and demand charges that have made historical fast EV charging stations unprofitable,” says Mark Johnson, President at CleanestCharge. “Scaling and replicating fast charging EVs with cleanest energy stored solar profitably is CleanestCharge’s unique success differentiated from money-losing EV charging networks.”
The Silta solution is built to enable infrastructure developers to access DeFi liquidity to cover the costs associated with the development of the infrastructure. Silta provides credit assessments and underwrites DeFi loans by providing infrastructure borrowers with on-chain collateral. Borrowers begin making repayments on the loans once the infrastructure enters its operational phase. Each CleanestCharge station is valued at $1.2 Million, with a 12.4% IRR, 466kWh daily solar output, 576kWh battery capacity and 4 charge points with 2 X 175kW fast chargers. CleanestCharge intends to utilise grants from the fully funded Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 Trillion infrastructure package signed into law by President Joe Biden in November 2021. Along with this, state incentives like the generous California Lower Carbon Fuel Standard, Fast Charging Infrastructure, and Storage Generation Incentive Program help with paying down CAPEX. “Silta helpfully removes the lending middlemen by digitizing our tangible, vetted and verified solar storage EV fast charging CleanestCharge station on-chain assets that are directly visible and investable making the funding process simpler and much more efficient,” Johnson continues.
Rob Holmes, Silta’s Head of Partnerships, is thrilled at the potential impact that getting these types of projects financed through DeFi can bring to the world. “Road transportation is one of the largest contributing sectors to global greenhouse gas emissions. But profitability of solutions like EV charging stations must be achieved if we are to truly scale up clean transportation and put a dent in global carbon emissions. It’s projects like these where DeFi can make a difference in this world without compromising on profitability of the companies bringing about the changes we all want to see,” he says.
About Silta Finance Silta is the DeFi bridge to a sustainable future. Silta underwrites loans by providing on-chain collateral to enable real-world infrastructure developers to access DeFi. The Silta Score, which reflects the creditworthiness of an infrastructure borrower, is encapsulated in a dynamic, periodically updating NFT. Silta aims to help balance crypto traders’ portfolios with new products largely immune to crypto winters.
About CleanestCharge CleanestCharge’s mission is to scale up clean transportation by providing a fast and convenient EV charging service while also enabling profitability. We engineer, fund, build, and operate holistic systems comprised of solar canopies, battery energy storage, and fast EV charging using Tier 1, off-the-shelf, bankable technologies and a nationwide multi-billion-dollar installer.
