Six Months of Progress: How Third Pillar Solar Is Scaling With CapeZero

December 19, 2025
Author:
Luke Syka

Before partnering with CapeZero, what were the main challenges or gaps you saw in how renewables development and project finance were traditionally approached?

Third Pillar Solar (TPS) runs a lean team, especially across Project Finance and P&C functions so we needed to figure out a method to grow our business without creating layers of complexity around process and data that ultimately would require G&A investments to manage.CapeZero's solution enables a dynamic and efficient single source of truth for project and portfolio economics and capital planning, which is allowing TPS to move away from multiple project and platform models that are not integrated and require labor intensive manual updates and roll ups.

In practice, this meant our team spent a lot of time reconciling different versions of models, documents, and assumptions just to get to a clean starting point. Underwriting and portfolio views were often generated as one-off exercises, which made it harder toc ompare opportunities consistently or to quickly answer detailed questions from investors and counterparties. We weren't lacking in expertise, but the tools and workflows available to us were not designed for the speed, volume, and transparency expectations of today's climate infrastructure markets.


What made CapeZero stand out from other options you considered, and how did it align with Third Pillar’s broader mission and values?

CapeZero stood out because it's built specifically for clean energy infrastructure, so it maps directly to how we think about projects, risk, and impact. It also aligns with our commitment to rigor and transparency in how we evaluate and communicate opportunities internally and to capital providers.

CapeZero came with a native understanding of projects, portfolios, which meant we could focus on our edge rather than building infrastructure from scratch.Culturally, the emphasis on high-quality data, clear storytelling, and investor-grade outputs matched how we want Third Pillar to be perceived in the market: disciplined, transparent, and forward-looking.



In the first six months, what are the most meaningful outcomes or insights you’ve gained from using CapeZero ?

In the first six months, CapeZero has significantly reduced manual spreadsheet work, allowing us to avoid adding headcount of solely dedicated to financial modeling. It has also given us a centralized, reliable view of our pipeline which enhances collaboration between our internal experts.

As we grow, that combination of structure and agility is critical, not just for our own operations, but for building trust with the investors and capital partners we work with. TPS intends to move towards a solution in which CapeZero is our primary modeling and P&C tool where simple updates to project inputs seamless flow through to corporate capital budgeting views. The CapeZero team is very nimble and is constantly rolling out new useful features and tweaking existing ones to make them better, which is very different than our experience with other software providers.


How has CapeZero changed the way your team works day-to-day, either internally or with your own stakeholders, counterparties, or investors?

CapeZero is becoming the shared source of truth for our team, which has made internal coordination much smoother. It's also elevated how we show up with investors and partners, because we can answer questions faster and back up our story with consistent data.

We've also been able to allocate resources to value-building parts of operations rather than adding headcount purely dedicated to Excel financial modeling.

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Our insights

Six Months of Progress: How Third Pillar Solar Is Scaling With CapeZero

In the first six months, CapeZero has significantly reduced manual spreadsheet work, allowing us to avoid adding headcount of solely dedicated to financial modeling. It has also given us a centralized, reliable view of our pipeline which enhances collaboration between our internal experts.

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