SUN CAPITAL: TWO MILITARY VETERANS BUILD AN INVESTMENT COMPANY HINGED ON NORTH CAROLINA'S SURGING SOLAR INDUSTRY.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: NC TREND: Money talk: North Carolina's financial set

North Carolina takes great pride in ranking second nationally for solar-power capacity, a ranking that has many roots, including Dan McCready's battlefield experience. While leading a 65-member platoon of Marines in Afghanistan in 2007-08, the Charlotte native and Duke University graduate was intrigued that power generated by small solar panels could lessen the soldiers' reliance on heavy batteries. "It wasn't because the Marines were interested in being green or sustainable," he says. "But solar could reduce the need for resupply and allow soldiers to stay in the field longer."

After his military career ended, McCready went on to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School in 2011 and then took the obligatory postgraduate consulting job: In his case, it was at McKinsey & Co., which takes in $10 billion annually advising global companies. McCready didn't enjoy the work--too many PowerPoint demonstrations, he says--so he left after a year and joined a friend, fellow Marine Rye Barcott, in looking for opportunity in North Carolina's nascent solar-energy business. Barcott, another Harvard MBA who had been a special assistant to Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers, also was itching for a change in 2013.

"We saw billions of dollars of solar farms ready to be built and an enormous lack of capital investment in that space," McCready says. The duo started Double Time Capital, the name reflecting their military roots, and prowled for investors to acquire interests in solar projects that would sell power to Duke through contracts of up to 20 years. North Carolina law requires the electric utility to gradually expand its use of renewable energy, giving a big step up for the solar industry. Tax policy also provided a huge incentive through a 35% state tax credit and 30% federal credit: In other words, $1 of state tax liability could be reduced by 65 cents for an individual investing in a solar deal. (The state credit expired at the end of 2015 as part of a push to cut subsidies and simplify the tax code.)

With Harvard and big-company backgrounds, McCready and Barcott knew many wealthy people desiring tax breaks. Rogers, who left Duke in mid-2013, helped the duo make connections and became an adviser. Still, raising money was no snap. It took about 1,000 meetings with investors to raise their first fund of $7 million.

"Many of our investors were initially skeptical because they had heard of industry failures such as [California-based solar-panel maker...