May 19, 2019
BlueWave Solar LLC, a Boston-based developer of solar energy projects, ranks No. 1 on Boston Business Journal’s Fast 50. BlueWave reported three-year top-line growth of 923 percent, from $7.8 million in 2015 to $80.3 million in 2018.
“Access to clean energy is at the core of our mission,” John DeVillars, chairman and co-founder of BlueWave, said. “It should be reassuring to investors and public policymakers that there’s a thriving clean energy industry.”
Founded in 2010, BlueWave has grown to around 90 employees, including a handful of MSRED alumni. The company makes solar credits available for purchase by business owners, homeowners and renters. These groups can also finance the purchase of solar panels through the company.
With innovation at the forefront of BlueWave’s mission, the primary focus nowadays is developing “solar community farms.” BlueWave identifies the costs and financing associated with acquiring large plots of brown-fields, former landfills and similar sites, and then covering them with solar panels. Once a project is complete, BlueWave sells the whole farm of solar panels to Wall Street firms, i.e. Goldman Sachs, which in turn packages the solar farms into long-term securities for investors. Currently, BlueWave has developed 135 megawatts of solar projects, one of which is the Community Solar Farm in Oxford, and it alone produces enough electricity to power 154 single-family homes and offset 1,135 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
A possible new revenue source may come from cutting-edge complementary businesses, such as agrivoltaics — combinations of agriculture and solar energy farming. For now, BlueWave is focused on its solar farm business as a key to future growth.
“The development business is the foundation of our business, and we’ll continue to invest and seek to distinguish ourselves as a high performer in that space,” DeVillars said.
