J. H. Whitney Adopts the beEdison Platform to Source Energy Investment Opportunities in North America

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- beEdison™ announced today J.H. Whitney Investment Management, LLC (JHWIM) has selected beEdison  as a screening partner for distributed energy generation projects for investment by J.H. Whitney Distributed Generation Fund I, LP (JHWIM D. G. Fund I), to which JHWIM serves as investment advisor.  JHWIM D.G. Fund I will utilize the beEdison Platform under a license agreement running through 2017. Solar, Energy Storage and Natural Gas CHP Projects seeking equity and debt financing solutions are encouraged to contact JHWIM directly or diligence professionals at beEdison.

"Through their truSolar^® risk screen, beEdison provides us with pre-vetted, institutional-quality projects, accelerating our origination and sourcing functions while increasing the time our investment team has available to focus on thoughtful deal execution," noted John M. B. O'Connor, CEO of J.H. Whitney Investment Management, LLC and Founding Partner of JHWIM D. G. Fund I. "We also anticipate the platform will help us decrease the cost of origination and increase conversion ratios of our project pipeline," he added.

J.H. Whitney Investment Management, LLC is an affiliate of J.H. Whitney & Company, one of the oldest private equity firms in the United States.  JHWIM D. G. Fund I provides flexible equity and debt financing solutions to resilient distributed power generation assets nationwide. The firm likewise contemplates utilizing beEdison to screen and evaluate solar farms and microgrids.

"We are delighted to welcome J.H. Whitney Investment Management, LLC as a key multi-technology partner," said Jeff Weiss, Managing Member of beEdison. "We are committed to providing the industry's premier platform for distributed power risk assessment and catalyst for investment risk evaluation for developers, equity and debt providers.  Our developer-friendly, investor-preferred solution is a game-changer – a timely offering that helps our partners increase operational efficiencies and reduce transaction costs."

beEdison uses the truSolar^®  uniform risk-screening standard to simplify a complex process, similar to how TurboTax^®  works for the tax code, or FICO^®  for evaluating credit worthiness. Linking customizable, logic-based surveys and recommendation engines to risk scores, readiness ratings, document libraries, financial information, and powerful reporting tools in a deal room, the platform simplifies the process of screening, evaluating and investing in distributed generation power projects.  Informed by the performance of more than 1,000 non-residential and small-utility solar projects valued at more than $10 billion, beEdison offers the first workflow and diligence platform for buyers and sellers of commercial solar assets. In the rush to complete projects by 2016, beEdison will be an indispensable workflow and diligence tool for developers and providers of equity and debt financing to efficiently sort through an exploding project pipeline, complete development and secure financing swiftly, while preparing portfolios for the secondary markets.

JHWIM joins Building Energy and Altus Power as licensed customers on the beEdison platform. Additional partners will be announced in the coming weeks.

ABOUT J.H Whitney Investment Management, LLC
J.H. Whitney Investment Management, LLC ("JHWIM") is an institutional asset investment manager and the Investment Advisor to JHWIM Distributed Generation Fund I, L.P (JHWIM D. G. Fund I). JHWIM D. G. Fund I is focused on direct equity and debt investments the distributed renewable energy generation space and is aggressively building a portfolio of solar, wind, CHP, storage and micro-grid assets throughout the US.  Transactions are generally between $2 and $30 million in value.  The JHWIM team has extensive experience in the distributed renewable energy space, having deployed over $180 million since 2010 in US-based municipal, military and commercial solar photovoltaic projects.  If you are a developer, EPC or other party looking to explore financing options, please contact Thomas (Jamie) Devine at [email protected].

ABOUT beEdison™  
beEdison™ introduces the solar industry's first automated, commercial platform that standardizes and professionalizes the diligence process for non-residential solar. beEdison is a sophisticated cloud-based software platform designed to eliminate the inefficiencies in today's marketplace, standardize the diligence process, and uniformly assess risk. beEdison helps solar industry buyers (investors & lenders) and sellers (developers & originators) through an automated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Diligence-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform. beEdison is a portfolio company of Distributed Sun. To submit projects to the beEdison platform email [email protected]

ABOUT truSolar^®
The truSolar^® risk screen is an open-source solution developed by the solar industry to streamline finance costs for commercial solar installations providing a comprehensive assessment of risks for developers, equity and debt providers – including benchmarked evaluation of system, counterparties, credit, regulatory issues and system performance.  truSolar^® is offered as an accessible industry-established standard for adoption by stakeholders at all stages of the project lifecycle and industry value chain.  In doing so, the truSolar^® solution evaluates more than 800 factors impacting a project's performance and establishes a uniform model to assess non-residential solar facilities while helping to catalyze the growth of the multi-billion dollar domestic commercial solar market.

beEdison^® is the first cloud-based engine powered by truSolar^®.  The truSolar^® standard is in the process of being transferred to a non-profit accreditation body, making it available for use by the entire industry.  The truSolar^® Working Group is a consortium of leading solar market participants which exists to establish uniform risk screening standards for commercial and industrial PV projects and, in turn, drive down costs and scale up non-residential solar installations. To learn more, visit www.trusolarscore.com. 

For more information: 
Robert C Henning 
[email protected] 
Tel: 202-558-4888

SOURCE beEdison