The most revealing number attached to a solar development is rarely its capacity. It is the calendar. Santa Marta, the 200MW solar asset at the centre of the Solar45 platform, has been in development since 2019. Seven years to take a site from early assessment toward Ready to Build is not a sign of difficulty. In this sector it is close to normal, and understanding why explains how renewable value is actually built.
Nobody builds a solar farm in a year. The timeline is part of the asset class, not an obstacle to it.
What happens across those years
A solar development timeline is a sequence of permissions, each one dependent on the last. The site has to be assessed for irradiance, terrain and proximity to a network that can take the output. Land rights have to be secured. Environmental assessment follows, then planning, then the grid application, which in most European markets now sits in a queue behind projects that may never be built. We set out those gates in more detail in battery storage development as a sequence.
None of this can be accelerated by capital alone. A regulator does not move faster because a project is well funded. The value in a development asset accrues to whoever is still there when the permissions arrive, which is a different quality from the one public markets reward.
Location as a fixed advantage
Some things about a solar asset can change. The technology can be upgraded, the layout revised, the storage sized differently. What cannot change is where it is. Irradiance, terrain, proximity to a substation and the capacity of that substation are fixed the moment the site is chosen.
That is why site selection carries so much weight in Portuguese solar. The country has some of the strongest irradiance in Europe, but the network is not uniformly able to absorb it, so two sites a short distance apart can have entirely different prospects. Santa Marta pairs 200MW of solar with potential for 150MW / 600MWh of storage in southern Portugal, as described in the Santa Marta project overview. The wider market case is in why the value in solar development in Portugal sits before the panels go in.
Why the exit is designed before the asset is finished
Development stage strategies are built around a handover. The work is to advance a project to the point where a different kind of buyer, typically institutional, will take it on. That buyer will underwrite a construction ready asset but not a planning application, which is why the value step occurs at Ready to Build.
Designing toward that moment shapes every decision along the way. Consents are pursued in the order an eventual buyer will want to see them. Grid capacity is secured early because it is the hardest item to fix later. Commercial arrangements are documented to a standard that will survive external due diligence. Portugal’s new auction framework changes how that capacity is secured, as covered in what Portugal’s energy storage strategy means for Santa Marta and Baloiço.
The name, and an important distinction
Some readers will know the Santa Marta name from the Santa Marta Bond, a Frankfurt listed instrument that redeemed in full in December 2025. That story is told in from planning to full redemption.
The distinction matters. A redeemed bond is a closed record. The Santa Marta development is an ongoing project with its own risks and its own timeline. The two share a name and a market, not an outcome, and the bond’s result says nothing about what the development will deliver. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
What the timeline asks of capital
Development assets suit capital that can wait and does not need a daily price. They do not suit capital with a short horizon or a need for liquidity, because there is no market to sell into partway through a planning process. Capital committed at this stage is at risk for the full term, projects can stall, and consents can be refused.
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