Michael Chanin knows exactly when the seed of Cherry Street Energy was planted. It was Friday, Sept. 18, 2015.

“It was the light bulb moment,” Chanin said. “That was the seminal launch.”

He was meeting with attorney Steven Richman at the Cherokee Town Club for a Friday fried chicken meal.

Richman asked Chanin if he had heard about House Bill 57 — the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act — recently been signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal. The bill allowed a third-party, non-utility company to sell solar power directly to customers.

Instantaneously Chanin envisioned a solar power company — Cherry Street Energy, named after Chanin’s hometown of Macon. Cherry Street is a major downtown corridor, and it is where his family once had a clothing store.

In 2015, Chanin was working for SunTrust Robinson Humphrey as a professional credit underwriter providing capital to media and technology companies. Although satisfied at his job, Chanin longed to do “something larger than myself,” something that would make the world a better place.

“That Friday, when I learned the law had changed in Georgia, it was like prohibition had just ended,” Chanin said. “That night I wrote that the built environment would incorporate renewable power on every structure that can support it.”

Talking to Chanin is like catching a ray of sun and hope for a more sustainable world — one that is less reliant on carbon emissions and fossil fuels.

“Our fuel is the sun, which is abundant and free,” Chanin said. “The sun shines enough in one hour to power the world for a year.”

When Chanin talks, it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. 

Did you know that Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect — the foundational science that led to capturing energy from the sun?

“In 1955, Bell Labs took that theory, and they created the photovoltaic battery,” Chanin said. “The first solar battery was in Americus, Georgia.”

Who knew?

The business model: Cherry Street Energy installs, owns and maintains all the solar power infrastructure at a location. In return, the customer agrees to a 20-year or 30-year contract to pay for the solar energy it uses, often at a savings over what it is currently paying for power.

Chanin compared it to a security company installing a system in someone’s house, and the customer then pays a monthly bill. Cherry Street, however, is not in the residential market, just commercial and institutional customers.

“We operate and maintain a power plant at your place of business,” Chanin explained. “It is predictable, long-term, recurring revenue with an opportunity to do well and do good.”

One of the first people Chanin reached out to was Macon Mayor Robert Reichert and his green team in December 2015. 

“You’re telling me that at no cost to the city, you are going to save us money because your energy is less than Georgia Power, and I can say we have gone green?” the mayor asked. “We want to be first.”

Chanin signed a solar energy agreement with the City of Macon, which agreed to purchase all the electricity that Cherry Street Energy’s solar panels produced on 128 buildings in Macon. “We are still building it out,” Chanin said.

Chanin also reached out to the City of Atlanta and Stephanie Stuckey. She wanted the City of Atlanta to be first, and so it ended up that the first actual Cherry Street project that got turned on was at the C.T. Martin Recreation Center in Atlanta. Now it has “power plants” at 40 City of Atlanta buildings with plans to expand.

Today, Cherry Street Energy has about 50 corporate and institutional customers – Fulton County, Savannah-Chatham County, Athens-Clarke County, Gulfstream Aviation, Porsche, Emory University and Woodward Academy, to name a few. It now operates in nine Southeastern states.

He differentiates Cherry Street Energy from other solar energy companies by saying: “We sell solar power. Other folks sell solar panels.”

Cherry Street also has had to launch the Shine-On Solar School to train people how to install and maintain solar energy systems. It has to build out a workforce in every community where it operates. The company has 70 direct employees, and it has helped create 250 jobs through its school and various ventures.

Because Cherry Street Energy is a power company, it’s natural to wonder about its relationship with Georgia Power.

“From the very beginning, we wanted to be a great partner,” Chanin said. “We had no interest at all in being antagonistic. Our incentives are fully aligned with our customers and Georgia Power.”

Early on, Chanin was introduced to David Ratcliffe through a mutual friend. Ratcliffe is a former CEO of Georgia Power who retired as CEO of its parent, Southern Company, in 2010. When he ran both companies, Ratcliffe readily acknowledged he was skeptical of solar power and its ability to become a major part of the utility’s power portfolio.

But in 2018, Chanin met Ratcliffe and shared Cherry Street Energy’s business plan.

“I told him I started a power company. He laughed,” Chanin said. “Then, after our presentation, he said: “I don’t know what y’all are looking for. I’m willing to invest.”” 

That’s how Ratcliffe became Cherry Street’s first lead investor and a member of its board.

“I thought it was a pretty good idea, and the timing was good,” Ratcliffe said in a phone interview. “Every company is looking to include renewable energy in their portfolio. You will have customers who want to say they are using renewable energy.”

Given the growth of AI and data centers — both energy hogs — the need for additional energy production is tremendous.

“Anything that Cherry Street can do to minimize that and take some of that load off Georgia Power will be positive,” Ratcliffe said. “It is a growing partnership between Cherry Street and Georgia Power. “

Currently, renewable energy sources like wind and solar account for less than 10 percent of Georgia Power’s energy portfolio (think natural gas, coal and nuclear power).

“Even when I was a skeptic, I thought renewables needed to be part of the mix,” said Ratcliffe, who has since become more of a believer. “It was a good time. The technology got better. The price point was better.  The economics are good.”

Ratcliffe added that the real potential for the future will be combining solar with battery storage technology.

At 42, Chanin has had quite an amazing journey. Growing up in Macon, he became aware of racial inequities, which made a big impression on him.

He went to Northwestern, where he was an African American studies major focusing on history and English. He did his senior thesis on Albion Tourgée, the attorney who argued the Plessy versus Ferguson case in the late 1800s.

When he was at Northwestern in 2006, a fellow classmate invited him to go to the annual meeting of his grandfather’s company. Their classmate was Howie Buffett, and his grandfather was Warren Buffett. Going to the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway that May and getting acquainted with Warren Buffett’s philosophy of business also has made an impact on Chanin.

After Northwestern, Chanin attended the University of Cambridge in England, where he studied human rights. 

His first corporate job was with Goldman Sachs. In 2010, he met his future wife, Amanda. Together they moved to San Francisco, but they decided to move back to Atlanta to get married on March 1, 2014, and he got a job with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. 

For three years after the light bulb went off, Chanin kept his job, working on Cherry Street plans at night and on weekends. But Amanda left her day job to help launch the company.

After the first capital raise in 2018 of $2.5 million, Cherry Street raised another $40 million in capital raise in 2022. Chanin said the company also has secured several hundred million in debt capital from Synovus Bank, Bank of America and Fifth Third Bank.

For Chanin, the potential for Cherry Street Energy is as bright as the sun.

“We can stand toe-to-toe with the power company in our ability to sell electricity at competitive prices,” Chanin said. “Of the Fortune 500 companies, 80 percent have some commitment to renewable energy. It’s in everyone’s interest to have reliable, affordable, safe electricity.”

Chanin, however, said solar energy “does not solve the conundrum of data centers.” Just one data center in Fayette County will use up nearly as much power as Vogtle Unit 4, which just went into operation.

But solar will play an ever-increasing role in the generation of power.

“In the next 25 years, renewable resources and capacity will represent likely more than half of our energy mix,” Chanin said. “We know we are helping solve the problem. We have created a platform and a business model to allow our customers to incorporate renewable power. It’s as simple as sunshine.”

Note to readers: I first sat down with Michael Chanin a couple of days after writing about the sunset of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation in 2030. The late Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of Interface, was a visionary who made a deep impression on me when I met in in the mid-1990s. Listening to Michael Chanin, I was reminded of how I felt when I would hear Anderson share his thoughts on the environment, corporate responsibility and our future. It’s comforting to see a similar vision in someone so young.