Case Study: Cutting renewable M&A go/no-go time from weeks to hours with iQueue | REplace Insights

How an established renewable acquirer rebuilt its CIM review step around iQueue, surfacing independent COD estimates, interconnection cost signals, and developer track record before opening a VDR.

← All insights Case Study · April 2026 · Reading time · 5 min Rapid screening / Go-no-go How one renewable M&A team reduced go/no-go time on inbound deals from weeks to hours An established acquirer added iQueue as an independent first screen on every CIM, surfacing queue context before any VDR is opened. Profile Established acquirer with a dedicated M&A and BD team. Typically tracking 10 to 20 projects across multiple RTOs at any given point in their pipeline. Has experienced the cost of entering NDAs or exclusivity on projects that later revealed fatal flaws, including interconnection cost overruns, permitting gaps, and unrealistic COD timelines. When a Confidential Investment Memo lands in their pipeline, the team does an initial filter. But the CIM tells them what the seller wants them to know. Before committing resources to opening a VDR and standing up a full workstream review, the team needed an independent read on whether the project's queue context held up. Done manually, that meant tracking down interconnection study PDFs on the RTO's website and parsing lengthy documents to extract cost breakdowns and trace SPV ownership back to the actual developer. This took days. Approach What they did with iQueue They built iQueue into the CIM review step. Before requesting VDR access, the analyst runs the project in iQueue to get the queue context that the CIM does not contain: an independent COD estimate based on queue position and study stage, interconnection cost signals, which other projects are queued at the same substation, and the developer's broader portfolio and track record. If the CIM claims a 2027 COD and iQueue's estimate points to 2029, that discrepancy goes into the Q&A tracker before the VDR even opens. This check now takes minutes. Outcome Result Projects that would previously have entered a full VDR review are now getting filtered at the CIM stage. One project that would previously have entered a full workstream review was eliminated at the CIM stage after iQueue's independent COD estimate came in two years later than the seller's claim, a discrepancy that would have taken weeks to surface without it. For the deals that did advance to VDR, the team entered the interconnection workstream with queue context already in hand: where the project stood in the RTO queue, what other projects were queued at the same substation, and what the developer's broader portfolio suggested about their track record and likelihood of reaching COD. The formal Q&A tracker reflected those specifics, with questions about queue position and cost assumptions rather than starting from baseline verification of what the seller had already provided. "The question we kept asking ourselves was: why are we getting this far on a project before we find this out? Now we have a real first screen. It does not replace diligence, it just means we are spending diligence budget on projects that deserve it." VP of Business Development, a U.S. renewable developer
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Case Study · April 2026·Reading time · 5 min

Rapid screening / Go-no-go

How one renewable M&A team reduced go/no-go time on inbound deals from weeks to hours

An established acquirer added iQueue as an independent first screen on every CIM, surfacing queue context before any VDR is opened.

Profile

Established acquirer with a dedicated M&A and BD team. Typically tracking 10 to 20 projects across multiple RTOs at any given point in their pipeline. Has experienced the cost of entering NDAs or exclusivity on projects that later revealed fatal flaws, including interconnection cost overruns, permitting gaps, and unrealistic COD timelines.

When a Confidential Investment Memo lands in their pipeline, the team does an initial filter. But the CIM tells them what the seller wants them to know. Before committing resources to opening a VDR and standing up a full workstream review, the team needed an independent read on whether the project's queue context held up.

Done manually, that meant tracking down interconnection study PDFs on the RTO's website and parsing lengthy documents to extract cost breakdowns and trace SPV ownership back to the actual developer. This took days.

Approach

What they did with iQueue

They built iQueue into the CIM review step. Before requesting VDR access, the analyst runs the project in iQueue to get the queue context that the CIM does not contain: an independent COD estimate based on queue position and study stage, interconnection cost signals, which other projects are queued at the same substation, and the developer's broader portfolio and track record.

If the CIM claims a 2027 COD and iQueue's estimate points to 2029, that discrepancy goes into the Q&A tracker before the VDR even opens. This check now takes minutes.

Outcome

Result

Projects that would previously have entered a full VDR review are now getting filtered at the CIM stage. One project that would previously have entered a full workstream review was eliminated at the CIM stage after iQueue's independent COD estimate came in two years later than the seller's claim, a discrepancy that would have taken weeks to surface without it.

For the deals that did advance to VDR, the team entered the interconnection workstream with queue context already in hand: where the project stood in the RTO queue, what other projects were queued at the same substation, and what the developer's broader portfolio suggested about their track record and likelihood of reaching COD.

The formal Q&A tracker reflected those specifics, with questions about queue position and cost assumptions rather than starting from baseline verification of what the seller had already provided.

"The question we kept asking ourselves was: why are we getting this far on a project before we find this out? Now we have a real first screen. It does not replace diligence, it just means we are spending diligence budget on projects that deserve it."

VP of Business Development, a U.S. renewable developer