Photo voltaic vitality is booming, which is sweet information for sunshine. The Norwegian software-as-a-service startup has created a platform that’s serving to vitality giants and enormous photo voltaic builders akin to E.ON, Recurrent Vitality and Statkraft cut back the time wanted to plan and pre-design photo voltaic installations to speed up the transition. to renewable energies.
Glint’s software program pulls information from a number of sources to assist speed up photo voltaic challenge evaluations. The platform options adaptive structure designs and efficiency estimates, together with country-specific geographic info system (GIS) information and topographic evaluation to make it simpler for photo voltaic builders to guage potential websites. Cloud-based collaboration options enable groups to entry important challenge information. The platform can be used as a challenge presentation support by providing 3D rendered challenge designs “in seconds.”
Since TechCrunch final spoke with the local weather startup in June 2022when it closed a $3 million seed spherical, its buyer base grew almost 10-fold, in line with CEO and co-founder Harald Olderheim. It’s now saying an $8 million Collection A to proceed fueling progress by increasing into extra markets in Europe.
At the moment, its essential buyer areas are France, Germany, the Nordics and the UK, however with the brand new funding, the SaaS launched in March 2020 will increase its gross sales groups to focus on prospects in “the remainder of Europe,” together with Italy and Spain. says Olderheim.
One notable change for the reason that launch of Glint Photo voltaic is that it has narrowed the service proposition to help the planning of terrestrial photo voltaic installations, abandoning a earlier twin product strategy that additionally included floating photo voltaic installations.
Olderheim stated the software program can nonetheless be used to plan floating photo voltaic. However he famous that there’s extra demand for land-based amenities. “It is a greater market,” he stated, explaining why they’ve chosen to streamline their gross sales strategy.
Glint Photo voltaic additionally doesn’t give attention to rooftop photo voltaic installations. A few of its prospects are additionally utilizing its software program to assist plan photo voltaic panels on “massive rooftops,” in line with Olderheim. However once more, the rationale you are not focusing your efforts there’s since you’re chasing a lot of the demand.
“If you happen to have a look at the market, about 60% of the market is large-scale utilities. After which about 20% are massive rooftops and 20% are residential. So we’re going in the direction of the larger market,” he informed TechCrunch. “If we need to have a big effect on the world… we are able to do it by utility scale, as a result of that is a lot sooner if you are going to enhance (photo voltaic) vitality on the earth.
“If you consider the impression we’re having with a photo voltaic plant, a big one, like 10 megawatts, possibly with 7,000 or 15,000 photo voltaic panels, it is a very environment friendly technique to rapidly enhance vitality manufacturing.”
Increasing impression
One other large focus of the Collection A money injection is product improvement. Olderheim stated the startup will increase its platform to assist prospects plan the place to put batteries that can be utilized to optimize renewable vitality investments by vitality storage.
Elements akin to community capability, protected areas and sound (as batteries produce some noise as soon as in operation) are concerns that the software program will have the ability to keep in mind, in line with Olderheim, along with offering prospects with help to make sure making a battery appropriate with the proposed photo voltaic panel and serving to them share info with owners as they work to acquire the mandatory permits.
It highlights how a lot the price of photo voltaic installations has dropped within the final decade (as much as 90%). But it surely additionally says that tasks are nonetheless not being executed as rapidly as they need to, given the existential threats of a warming planet that’s inflicting waves of disasters, from devastating floods and hurricanes to warmth waves, droughts and wildfires.
“It takes time to achieve all of the agreements (with the landowner, with the grid and with the municipality) to (ship a photo voltaic challenge) and all these processes take time; That is without doubt one of the the explanation why we created Glint Photo voltaic,” he provides.
The startup is closely centered on designing software program to maximise accessibility as one other tactic to assist remove friction in approving photo voltaic tasks.
“We’re making it very user-friendly so that everybody on a staff can use a software program collectively and work on this drawback to make (challenge supply) a lot sooner. And every part could be shared (with the land proprietor, with the community, with the municipality) in order that they’ll make selections a lot sooner and with much less threat.”
The platform has a number of “modules” that enable the identical individual to, for instance, “assess the location, arrange all of the tasks and design a photo voltaic park,” in line with Olderheim, supporting challenge groups to carry out extra functions.
He additionally highlights the platform’s cloud-based collaboration options that enable everybody to work “in the identical device,” suggesting it helps give it a bonus over different instruments.
Glint says prospects report that its SaaS helps photo voltaic builders triple their challenge pipeline on common and consider potential websites 10 instances sooner than conventional strategies.
In fact, software program can solely achieve this a lot. Olderheim agrees that infrastructure funding and regulatory reform are key to additional accelerating photo voltaic deployment, noting that grid capability and photo voltaic allowing are the primary areas for policymakers to deal with.
“Typically it takes 5 years from when (a challenge) begins to be constructed,” he notes, including: “I do know that the EU is finding out this to cut back it to 12 or 24 months. So I believe it is an excellent (begin).”
Glint Photo voltaic’s Collection A is led by Smedvig Ventures, with further investments from Antler Nordic and Antler Elevate, Futurum Ventures and Momentum.
Jonathan Lerner, companion at Smedvig Ventures, commented in a press release: “The photo voltaic business has carried out a terrific job growing methods to harness inexperienced vitality, however now we want higher processes to place these plans into motion. That is the hole that Glint Photo voltaic is filling. As one of many first unified merchandise for utility tasks in the marketplace, photo voltaic builders, engineers, analysts and managers can discover every part they should find the perfect land areas rapidly and precisely. “This can be a much-needed evolution from manually looking information from a number of sources, saving appreciable sources on essential inexperienced vitality tasks.”
