It’s 2025. Why is anyone managing their portfolio only in Excel?

Renewable energy portfolio management is changing

Good news is coming for the world of renewable energy: Project financiers expect continued growth for renewable energy portfolios in 2025. The falling costs of renewables and the rapidly growing energy demand stemming from manufacturing and AI data centers are expected to be the key growth drivers for renewable energy investments.

But continued growth means more workload for already busy portfolio managers in renewable energy project finance. The industry must look inward to ensure their teams have the right systems that can efficiently drive growth and effectively manage project portfolios. 

With ambitious growth goals in 2025, this raises the question: Why does anyone still manage their portfolios solely in Excel? 

How portfolio management is (not) working

As portfolio managers, you are experts in spreadsheet management, utilizing formulas and data models to properly monitor assets, analyze performance data, and manage adjustments. You have the painstaking task of ensuring investments remain profitable and compliant while consistently identifying areas for growth — a process involving detailed financial analysis, portfolio performance monitoring, and careful internal and external reporting. 

Tasked with these key functions, you also have to juggle information across disparate sources. Coordinating data updates across multiple spreadsheets, tabs, or data sources requires a level of time and accuracy that eats at the ability to successfully complete your job within a 40-hour week. Each data repository, formula, and report requires extensive customization that costs businesses thousands of hours in upstart and maintenance work. 

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According to the Project Finance Software Report released by Banyan Infrastructure earlier this year, nearly 20% of survey respondents spend 5+ hours per project per week on asset management activities, and 25% spend 5+ hours per week on compliance management and reporting. Altogether, the current administrative legwork required by roughly one-third of project finance professionals exceeds the 40-hour workweek for those managing just 1-10 deals. 

Current project finance methods require countless hours of data gathering, sorting, and organizing. The manual process of sharing static files, providing access to disparate data sources, and communicating across multiple channels creates a high potential for error in an already time- and labor-intensive process. An extra layer of complexity is added each time a project or fund moves from origination to management and compliance, as additional departments need access to historical data to complete their jobs.

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The single-person risk in project finance software

While project finance professionals know how to navigate complex spreadsheets, the majority still run into the single-person risk, where one portfolio manager at a major fund is the sole person who can access a spreadsheet file that lives locally on their device. This practice is often implemented as a security measure to ensure proprietary portfolio data remains with necessary internal stakeholders. However, this only increases the risk that a fund is one personnel change, device malfunction, or theft away from losing all of its portfolio information. 

The introduction of shareable spreadsheets tried to lessen single-person risk by enabling real-time collaboration and cloud storage. But these platforms are no more user-friendly than a locally stored file. Software like Google Drive and Microsoft SharePoint provide a digital filing system that is accessible across devices, but has no means of connecting information found in separate files or aggregating that information into usable reports or insights. Portfolio management teams accumulate hours of work sorting through files and requesting information from colleagues, clients, or stakeholders to find the right data for asset management and reporting. 

‍Single-Person Risk: When one employee is the sole person in an organization who can access a file locally on their device, making them the only one who can provide key information to the rest of the fund for asset management, analyzing, and reporting.

Tech inertia as a barrier to improved project finance outcomes

Spreadsheet software was initially designed to digitize computation and data storage at a time when such work had only been done by hand. In the 40 years since the release of Microsoft Excel, spreadsheets have been used across job functions for everything from to-do lists to financial models to computer programming. 

The Project Finance Software Industry Report uncovers that 60% of respondents who use software to manage their deals and portfolios only use Microsoft and/or Google Suites — leaving their funds open to the single-person risk, major inefficiencies, and potential profit loss. 

Change of any kind is daunting. But the renewable energy transition is all about change. As we settle into 2025, it will be the portfolio management teams that push past their hesitancy to adopt new operational systems who will ultimately find success in growing, changing markets. 

There’s a better way to manage project finance

Technology has transformed since Microsoft Excel came onto the scene in 1985, yet many firms still rely on clunky, out-of-date spreadsheets to achieve present-day business goals. It’s time to align current operations with the unique demands of current financial projects.

In 2025, digital transformation is a must for smart portfolio managers seeking a single source of truth that makes data readily available and accessible across teams. Digital transformation tools come armed with intelligence capabilities that can provide support in finding, analyzing, and reporting on the data stored therein. If a spreadsheet is a file and the Cloud is a filing cabinet, the digital transformation system is the assistant capable of sorting through information and generating insights. 

Banyan Infrastructure was established by former renewable energy financiers to provide the growing industry with the tools necessary to excel — no pun intended. 

Banyan Infrastructure enables efficient, accurate, and collaborative project data management. Our software connects people across project finance and execution teams to the information they need to fund, deploy, and report on new projects quickly and securely. 

With Banyan Infrastructure, renewable energy portfolio managers can: 

• Reduce the legwork needed to find, sort, and manipulate portfolio data
• Connect siloed information in a single source of truth
• Collaborate with ease across internal and external teams
• Generate reports that are already configured to the industry’s compliance requirements

Our co-founders, Amanda Li and Will Greene, built Banyan Infrastructure to address the distinct needs of renewable energy portfolio managers and their colleagues, simplifying daily tasks and major projects alike. Purpose-built software like Banyan Infrastructure eliminates the need to spend time and resources customizing generic software to meet highly specific industry requirements. 

Banyan Infrastructure’s users can expect a user-friendly experience designed with their specific job functions in mind. Take Kyle Nesselbush’s experience using Banyan Infrastructure at Advantage Capital. After implementing Banyan Infrastructure software, he and his team reported saving time on data aggregation and production and reducing reputational risk.

‍Are you interested in streamlining your project finance work beyond spreadsheets? Learn more about how we can help your investments grow in 2025 by reaching out to a Banyan Infrastructure representative today.