Investment Analyst, Project Finance & Energy
Diego Valdés
About
I am a civil engineer turned project finance analyst. I work on the financing, structuring and commercial side of utility-scale solar and battery storage projects in Mexico, at a private capital firm where I joined as a junior analyst and was promoted twice in twelve months.
Day to day that means financial models and returns analysis, PPA origination, investor and lender materials, and the regulatory process with CENACE, CFE, SENER and the VUPE. My engineering background lets me connect the technical, regulatory and financial sides of the same project instead of treating them as separate conversations.
I also build the tooling around the work — models, trackers, screening scripts and AI-assisted workflows — because the analyst who automates the repetitive half of diligence gets to spend the other half on judgement.
Experience
May 2025 — PresentMexico City
Private capital firm focused on renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure.
I carry the financial and commercial side of what the firm takes to market: a USD 280M, 200 MWp solar project in Puebla moving toward financial close, a 15-year-plus PPA worth roughly USD 734M in contract value, a USD 100M multi-project equity commitment, and ARKE, an infrastructure Fibra E taken through a public listing process.
Underneath that sits the work that makes it possible — the models and the investment files, the regulatory process with the VUPE and CENACE, the materials that go to investors, the board and government, and the Python- and AI-assisted workflows that cut the turnaround on most of it.
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Ennova América is a private capital firm investing in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. I joined as a junior analyst and was promoted twice in twelve months. Today I carry the financial and commercial side of the projects the firm takes to market.
Most of my time goes to a USD 280M, 200 MWp solar project in Puebla. I built the investment file and the financial base case, and I support the structuring alongside the mandated bank and an EPC partner as the project moves toward financial close. Around it sits the offtake work: a power purchase agreement running 15 years and over, worth roughly USD 734M in contract value and about USD 274M in net present value, a ranked pipeline of a hundred potential counterparties, and a virtual PPA proposal to a Tier-1 hyperscaler. Lumina, the solar and battery storage financing model I took from concept to launch-ready, came out of the same effort.
On the capital side I supported the negotiations for a USD 100M multi-project equity commitment from a global asset manager, preparing the transaction structure, the portfolio-level return analysis and the materials that framed the discussions. I also coordinated the legal, financial and technical workstreams on ARKE, an infrastructure Fibra E developed with Diligentia and BBVA and taken through a public listing process, and produced the consolidated asset-level valuation used in its documentation.
The rest is the machinery that makes all of that possible: regulatory filings through the VUPE and CENACE, investor, board and government presentations, screening memos for the Investment Committee, market research on how much renewable capacity is actually available to private offtakers and on entering ERCOT, project schedules on critical path, and a CRM built from scratch. AI- and Python-assisted workflows cut the turnaround on most of it. I am also the firm’s Microsoft 365 Global Administrator.
Jun 2024 — May 2025Mexico City
Constructora y Edificadora GIA+A — construction and infrastructure group.
A year on the project finance desk of a construction and infrastructure group: public-private hospital concessions, an infrastructure opportunity taken to a state government, and cost estimates for competitive bidding on large-scale public works. The MXN 450M debt structuring on the hospital portfolio and the rebuild of the team’s modeling and reporting architecture are the two I would point to.
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- Supported the structuring of MXN 450M in subordinated debt with an infrastructure credit fund for a PPP hospital portfolio: coordinated lender information requirements across internal teams and advisors, resized the debt structure against DSCR covenants and prepared the lender-facing credit analysis.
- Rebuilt and standardized the financial model architecture, VBA tooling and Power BI reporting used across PPP hospital and infrastructure opportunities.
- Built the financial model and strategic presentation for an infrastructure opportunity in Baja California Sur, presented by senior leadership to state authorities and local business leaders.
- Prepared cost estimates for competitive bidding on large-scale public works, including government buildings and airports.
2022 — 2024Mexico City
Independent mandates, concurrent with undergraduate studies.
- Barite mining company (undisclosed) — Consultant to the CEO, 2022–2024. Built the valuation and ran the commercial due diligence for the acquisition of a producing barite mine, working alongside external legal counsel.
- Gonzalez Aleu Firm — Investment advisor, 2023–2024. Portfolio optimization and asset allocation analysis for private investors, reducing client fees by more than 5%.
- Bosque Real — PR & Sales Representative, 2022–2023. MXN 9M in luxury residential sales in the first month through direct outreach, and expanded the investor network among high-net-worth clients.
Deals & Projects
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Debt & structuring USD 430M + MXN 450M Project finance Two utility-scale solar projects in Mexico and a public-private hospital portfolio. Breakdown
Project finance
Two utility-scale solar projects in Mexico and a public-private hospital portfolio.
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USD 280M
Proton II — Tecali, Puebla
A 200 MWp utility-scale solar project, moving toward financial close. I built the investment file and the financial base case, and supported the structuring alongside the mandated bank and an EPC partner.
15%+ project IRR · 22%+ with exit strategy
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USD 150M
Proton I — Aguascalientes
A 104.5 MW utility-scale solar project, in development. I built the financial model and filed the project on the VUPE platform as a mixed-development project.
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MXN 450M
PPP hospitals — GIA+A
Subordinated debt with an infrastructure credit fund for a public-private hospital portfolio. I supported the structuring, resized the debt against DSCR covenants and prepared the lender-facing credit analysis.
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Equity USD 133M Equity Equity into a single project, and a commitment that covers the ones after it. Breakdown
Equity
Equity into a single project, and a commitment that covers the ones after it.
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USD 100M
Multi-project commitment — Ennova América
A multi-project equity commitment from a global asset manager, covering current and future projects. I supported the process with the transaction structure, the portfolio-level return analysis and the investment materials.
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USD 33M
Proton II equity
Equity for the Puebla project, across three large investors.
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Origination ~USD 734M NPV ~USD 274M PPA offtake Contract value of a power purchase agreement running 15 years and over. Breakdown
PPA offtake
Contract value of a power purchase agreement running 15 years and over.
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~USD 734M
A 15-year-plus PPA
Total contract value over the life of the agreement, with a net present value of about USD 274M. It is the one offtake process I have worked on, and I worked it end to end: screening the counterparty universe, modeling the price and the term, and preparing the materials that framed the discussions.
100-counterparty offtake pipeline, screening to active process
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Virtual PPA proposal
Out of the same pipeline came a virtual PPA proposal to a Tier-1 hyperscaler.
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Also Other work A listed infrastructure vehicle, a financing model, a market study and a tariff model. Breakdown
Other work
A listed infrastructure vehicle, a financing model, a market study and a tariff model.
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ARKE — Fibra E
Infrastructure vehicle developed with Diligentia and BBVA and taken through a public listing process. Coordinated the legal, financial and technical workstreams and produced the consolidated asset-level valuation.
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Lumina — solar + BESS
Solar and battery storage financing model built at Ennova América, from concept to launch-ready, cutting client energy costs through long-term service contracts.
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Mexico renewable supply study
How much of the announced renewable capacity is actually available to private offtakers, rather than already committed.
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Tariff savings model
CFE GDMTH tariff history (2018–2026, 29 tariff divisions) weighted by the store footprint of a national retailer.
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Education
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Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Santa Fe
Aug 2020 — Dec 2024
BS, Civil Engineering
Certified degree.
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Self-directed coursework
No certificate — listed for transparency, not as a credential
- Valuation — NYU, Aswath Damodaran (open course)
- Finance coursework — Rice University
- Justice — Harvard University
- Semiología de la vida cotidiana
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Summer work
Four summers between fifteen and eighteen, before any of the above.
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Goldman Sachs
age 18Three-week internship, remote and on a team: financial modeling at the pace and under the pressure of the desk’s day to day.
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CENCOR
age 17A week inside each company of the group — BIVA, MEI, Enlace, PIP and the holding — learning what each one does by doing its actual work. Most of the group left with an offer; I was 17 and they wanted interns with at least two years of university, so they told me to come back when I finished.
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Actinver
age 16Actinverano, the firm’s summer programme: rotating through every area, and a shortened Reto Actinver run among the interns.
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Ivoire
age 15At fifteen nobody in finance would take me, so I cleared tables, waited tables and helped the chef — unpaid, with the owners’ blessing — at one of the best-known French restaurants in Polanco. It is the first thing I would point to if someone asks whether I will do the unglamorous part.
AI in practice
AI is not a side interest. It is how the work gets done.
I use it across the whole pipeline: Claude for Excel to stress financial models and trace where a formula breaks, Claude for Word and Claude for PowerPoint to turn raw model output into investor memos and board decks, and Claude Code to build the internal tooling — offtaker screening scripts, regulatory monitors, trackers and dashboards that used to be manual work.
Claude Cowork and Claude chat are where a structuring question gets argued out before it reaches a committee. The rest of the stack gets used for what each one is best at: a second opinion, a faster search, a piece of visual material.
The point is not the tool list. Diligence turnaround that used to take a week of analyst time now takes an afternoon, and the time that frees up goes into judgement rather than formatting. This site is an example: written, built and deployed end to end with Claude Code.
Claude -
Claude Code -
Cowork -
Microsoft 365 -
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Design
Turnaround on a diligence request
hours of analyst time
- Before
- With AI
Diligence request
Self-reported estimate: a week of analyst time against an afternoon.
Side Projects
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Polytrade
LiveAutonomous forecasting system built on Claude that researches and prices Polymarket’s highest-volume prediction markets every six hours, with no human in the loop.
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Every six hours the system scans the highest-volume markets, runs its own research on each one and prices the probability of every outcome. Nothing in that loop waits for a person.
A conviction-weighted algorithm turns those forecasts into positions: it blends the edge with the model’s own confidence to decide what is worth taking, sizes each ticket to the strength of the signal, spreads exposure across markets, industries and geographies, and rotates capital out of weakening positions into stronger ones.
Calibration is scored against the market itself with the Brier score, and every forecast, trade and exit reason is published to the dashboard, so each decision the system takes can be checked from outside.
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Progressive Web App built for a family office to manage its real estate portfolio: Firebase and Firestore, push notifications, a flight-price API, role-based permissions and theming.
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Animated draw system for the 85th Cabo Anglers fishing tournament: an OR-Tools CP-SAT constraint solver behind a slot-machine-style HTML reveal.
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GIS cadastral mapping
Contour and cadastral mapping of roughly 330 hectares in Querétaro with QGIS.
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Paused projects
4 Four ventures on hold, and set to reopen. RizoJALDINA FoundationAutocontrolBlüm Water OpenPaused projects
Four ventures on hold, and set to reopen.
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Rizo
All-in-one booking marketplace and management platform for the beauty industry in Mexico.
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JALDINA Foundation
A foundation for education in Mexico: that nobody with the ability and the drive to study has to stop because of money.
It works on two fronts: improving access to education for people without resources, and improving quality of life so that someone with the ability and the drive is not forced out of school by their economic situation.
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Autocontrol
Automation startup, from switching lights to facial recognition, pattern and activity detection and scripted scenarios.
Three markets for the same idea: homes for individuals, offices for companies, and public spaces for government.
It also has a cybersecurity arm.
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Blüm Water
Water company, with a short-term business selling water and a long-term aim at the supply network itself.
The long-term goal is to put potable water meeting strict sanitation standards into Mexico’s water supply pipes.
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Skills
Finance
- Financial modeling
- Project finance
- Valuation (DCF, comparables)
- Commercial due diligence
- Market sizing
- Scenario & sensitivity analysis
- DSCR and debt sizing
- Transaction documentation
Energy markets
- Mexican Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM)
- CENACE
- CFE
- SENER
- CELs
- PPAs / VPPAs
- Solar & BESS
- Fibra E
Software
Excel, Word and PowerPoint at an exceptional level — keyboard-first, shortcut-driven, VBA where it pays off.
- Excel (advanced · VBA · macros)
- PowerPoint
- Word
- Outlook
- Microsoft 365
- Macabacus
- Power BI
Data, engineering & GIS
- Python (pandas, scikit-learn)
- QGIS
- AutoCAD
- Google Earth
- Firebase
- GitHub
Project management
- MS Project (critical path)
- Microsoft Planner
- Notion
- Airtable
- Microsoft 365 administration
Languages
- Spanish (native)
- English (B2)
- Italian (A1)
Contact
Open to conversations about project finance, renewable energy investment and commercial due diligence mandates.
- Email valdesgonzalezdiego@gmail.com
- LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/diego-valdes-gonzalez-
- Location Mexico City