Sunraycer Renewables has bought two solar projects in Illinois and Missouri totalling 325 MWac. Both hold site control, finished environmental studies and substantially complete permits. Neither can start construction until early 2028. The distance between those two facts is where the price of this portfolio sits.
Key takeaways
- Sunraycer Renewables, a portfolio company of Crayhill Capital Management, acquired the 325 MWac Gem City and Mighty Mississippi solar projects in Illinois and Missouri from Apricus Energy, a joint venture between NOVI Energy and Osaka Gas, announced on 3 November 2026 with no disclosed consideration.
- The 175 MWac Gem City project near Liberty in Adams County, Illinois received a Special Use Permit on 9 December 2025 granting a 40-year operational term from commercial operation, and is expected to generate about 393 GWh a year.
- The 150 MWac Mighty Mississippi project outside New Madrid in New Madrid County, Missouri covers about 1,270 acres of agricultural land secured through long-term leases and will interconnect with Ameren's 161 kV transmission system adjacent to the site.
- Both projects sit in the final phase of MISO's interconnection process, with construction expected to begin in early 2028 and commercial operations targeted for 2029 using safe-harboured equipment.
- Enerdatics records 216 US solar M&A transactions involving assets under development since the start of 2024, of which 26 carry a disclosed value.
What does a buyer get when it acquires a late-stage solar project?
It gets permissions and a position in a queue, not a power plant. A project at this stage is a bundle of four things: land control, an environmental and cultural clearance record, a local permit, and an interconnection application far enough advanced that the grid operator has priced the upgrades needed to connect it. None of those generate electricity. All take years to assemble and can fail at any point.
Gem City shows what that bundle looks like when nearly complete. It occupies about 1,190 acres across 24 contiguous parcels, roughly 860 of them designated for the solar facility. NOVI Energy carried the development work, from wetlands delineation and protected species studies to cultural and topographical surveys. It also carries an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement with the Illinois Department of Agriculture covering land restoration after decommissioning, the kind of obligation that is cheap to sign and expensive to retrofit.
What makes the two saleable together is that both interconnect to the same utility. Gem City connects to Ameren's 138 kV system through the Fishhook point inside the project boundary. Mighty Mississippi connects to Ameren's 161 kV system next door to its site. A buyer taking both takes one counterparty relationship and one engineering problem, not two.
Why does a fully permitted project still wait until 2028 to break ground?
Because the permits are not the binding constraint. The interconnection queue is. MISO studies proposed generators in clusters, assigns each a share of the network upgrades its connection requires, and issues a signed interconnection agreement only at the end. Until that agreement exists no lender will fund construction, because the cost of connecting is not yet a known number. Both projects are in the final phase, which is as close as a project gets without being finished.
The second constraint is equipment. Sunraycer expects to use safe-harboured equipment on both developments. Safe harbouring means buying or incurring costs on equipment early enough to lock a project into the tax credit regime that applied at purchase rather than at construction. It protects the economics against policy change, and it is one of the few reasons a developer holds hardware for two years before pouring concrete.
So construction in early 2028 and operations in 2029 is not a delay. It is the normal clock for a MISO project that has done everything else right, and it explains why Sunraycer is buying now. The pipeline it adds to is already about 3 GW of utility-scale solar and battery storage, and it has just extended that development pipeline into two new states.
What would this portfolio be worth if the price had been disclosed?
The market gives two very different answers depending on what is sold, and the gap is roughly fifty times. Priced MISO solar transactions split cleanly. When a utility buys a finished plant under a build-transfer agreement it pays for construction as well as development, and the figures land between $1.78 million and $2.22 million per MW: WEC Energy Group and MGE Energy paid $981.1 million for 552 MW of Invenergy solar and storage in June 2024, and $360.6 million for 165.4 MW from OneEnergy Renewables that November.
When a developer sells project rights before construction, which is what happened here, the numbers collapse. Otter Tail Power's purchase of the 295 MW Abercrombie project from Savion in December 2024 priced at about $0.04 million per MW. AES Corp's acquisition of the 170 MW Crossvine project from Lightsource bp in August 2024 priced at about $0.46 million per MW. Applied to 325 MWac, that band spans roughly $12 million to $149 million, which is wide enough to show why neither side volunteered a figure.
Enerdatics records 216 US solar M&A transactions involving assets under development since the start of January 2024, and only 26 disclose a value. The median disclosed price was about $0.09 million per MW in 2024 and about $0.16 million per MW in 2025. Those medians rest on 18 and 6 observations, so they describe the shape of the market rather than its level.
What does the deal signal for US solar M&A?
It signals that sellers at this stage are increasingly those without a balance sheet reason to build. Apricus was a joint venture in which NOVI Energy ran site acquisition, permitting, engineering and construction management, while Osaka Gas USA supplied development, operational and asset management support. That structure is built to develop and exit, and it exited where the next cheque is the large one.
The buyer profile is the mirror image. Crayhill Capital Management's backing gives Sunraycer the capital to carry a project through construction and the appetite to hold an interconnection position for two years. Expect more US development-stage portfolios to move between these two kinds of counterparty, and expect most to stay undisclosed, because a development price is a negotiated premium on effort rather than a multiple of anything observable. Illinois keeps producing them, from community solar portfolios to the utility territories that shape how they get financed.
Frequently asked questions
How much did Sunraycer Renewables pay for the 325 MW portfolio?The consideration was not disclosed. Enerdatics records 216 US solar transactions involving assets under development since the start of 2024, of which only 26 carry a disclosed value, so opacity is the norm at this stage.
What is safe-harboured equipment?Equipment bought or committed to early enough that the project is locked into the tax credit regime in force at the time of purchase, rather than when construction begins. It protects project economics against policy change and transfers with the project.
When will the Gem City and Mighty Mississippi projects start generating?Construction is expected to begin in early 2028 with commercial operations targeted for 2029. Both projects are in the final phase of MISO's interconnection process, the step that must complete before construction financing can close.
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