Developers and capital facilitators
You hold the project and take it to institutional capital. Cairn gives you a stack you can defend line by line, so the haircut is argued from documents rather than taken on faith.
Cairn by AlpenGrid Analytics · Partner beta
Grid revenue for solar and storage, priced from the documents.
Cairn takes a commercial site and a system and returns every grid-service and incentive stream it can reach: wholesale market products, utility demand response, and state and utility incentives. Each rate is priced from its governing document, each assumption is labeled, and the constraint that limits the stack is named.
Or email support@alpengridanalytics.com with your firm, your role and the states you work in.
A current-market estimate from published prices & program rules — not a forecast.
Models grid revenue and incentive payments — excludes federal tax credits (ITC) and on-bill savings.
What goes in, what comes out
What goes in
- ZIP code
- Customer sector
- Peak load
- Battery kW and kWh
- Solar kW and yearly production
What comes out
- Every stream the site can reach, each marked Verified or Unverified
- Stacked revenue by year over the term
- What limits the stack
- A pro forma in Excel
How it works
Site
Enter a ZIP code. Cairn resolves the utility, the state and the grid operator, and lists only the programs that territory can reach.
System
Battery power and capacity; solar if there is any; the site's peak load, which bounds what a demand-response program can credit.
Programs
Every program for the territory, each with a Verified or Unverified chip and a status word: Open, Closed, Waitlist or Budget exhausted. Programs the project cannot use are greyed with the reason. Where two programs cannot be enrolled together, one is held out and a Swap link trades them.
Results
Recurring revenue per year and over the term, with one-time incentives kept separate. One row per stream, with its rate's verification and what stacking cost it. The stream that runs on what the battery has left, named. A "How this is calculated" drawer on every number. Download the pro forma as Excel.
Who it is for
Underwriters
You are asked to accept grid-service revenue nobody at the table can source. Cairn is a cited assumption list to work through, and a page per program with what it pays, when it dispatches, what the owner must do, and the diligence facts a credit committee asks.
Real estate owners and their advisors
You want to know what a site can earn beyond what it saves. Cairn shows the revenue side of a solar and battery project at your ZIP code, and what it takes to operationalize it.
What Verified means
A program is Verified when every payment component has its rate confirmed by its own evidence: a sourced market price series with provenance, a match against the governing docket document, a cited row from that document, or Cairn's own claim verifier run against the documents on file; and the program's operating document is on file. Anything less is Unverified, and the chip says which component falls short and why. Unverified programs are hidden by default and shown on request.
Verified certifies the rate. The hours, cycles and availability behind a figure are assumptions, and every one is labeled as Cairn's default or your change.
What a program page tells you
- Overview
- Risks
- What it pays, one row per payment leg: rate, what it applies to, term, how it pays, rate verified
- When it dispatches
- What you must do, as a checklist
- Diligence facts: who pays, under what instrument, funding position with its date, termination rights, caps, sunset, clawback exposure, how performance is measured, what it cannot be combined with
- Sources, each a link to the document
What it does not do
Cairn models grid revenue and incentive payments. It does not model federal tax credits or on-bill savings. It does not forecast: every figure is today's published price or program rule, held flat unless you change the default. It does not model degradation. The Excel export is the pro forma as strips; a formula-based export a bank can move assumptions in is planned. No lender has yet used or accepted Cairn output. The beta is where that gets tested.
Coverage
Six states
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, California.
Four wholesale markets
PJM, MISO, ISO-NE, CAISO.
Programs
33 Verified programs across them, 6 more shown as Unverified with the reason stated, and over 120 modeled. Programs outside the beta states stay visible, tagged Outside beta.
We are looking for beta testers
- Who
- Developers, capital facilitators, underwriters and advisors working on commercial solar and storage in the six states.
- What we ask
- Run your own sites. Tell us where the model has a hole and where an investor would need more.
- What you get
- Free access through the beta, a 30-minute working session with the modeling lead on your sites, and your corrections shipped, with your name on the changelog if you want it there.
- How
- Request beta access and tell us your firm, your role and the states you work in. You will have a workspace within one business day. Or book 30 minutes with the modeling lead and we will set it up together.
Or email support@alpengridanalytics.com.
Who built it
Cairn is built by Evan Murphy and Peter Pflaum. Evan has spent more than five years in distributed energy, running incentive and grid-revenue modeling for solar and storage projects from origination through operations. Peter has spent over a decade building software for renewable energy, including microgrid energy-management and simulation systems. In the project models they worked on, incentive and grid-service revenue was the weakest link, and they built Cairn to fix it. AlpenGrid Analytics also audits investor pro formas and builds custom revenue stacks.