Photo voltaic vitality is booming, which is nice information for Glint Photo voltaic. The Norwegian software-as-a-service startup has constructed a platform that’s serving to vitality giants and enormous photo voltaic builders equivalent to E.ON, Recurrent Power, and Statkraft reduce the time it takes to plan and pre-design photo voltaic installations to speed up the transition to renewables.
Glint’s software program pulls in knowledge from a number of sources to assist velocity up Photo voltaic undertaking assessments. The platform options adaptable format designs and yield estimates, together with country-specific geographic data system (GIS) knowledge and topographic evaluation to make it easer for photo voltaic builders to judge potential websites. Cloud-based collaboration options permit groups to entry important undertaking knowledge. The platform can be used as a undertaking presentation help by serving up 3D-rendered undertaking layouts “in seconds.”
Since TechCrunch final spoke with the local weather startup in June 2022, when it closed a $3 million seed spherical, its buyer base has grown nearly 10x, in response to CEO and co-founder Harald Olderheim. It’s now saying an $8 million Sequence A to maintain stoking the expansion fireplace by increasing into extra markets in Europe.
Its important areas for purchasers presently are France, Germany, the Nordics, and the U.Ok. however with the brand new funding, the March 2020-launched SaaS shall be increasing its gross sales groups to focus on prospects in “the rest of Europe,” together with Italy and Spain, Olderheim says.
One notable change since Glint Photo voltaic launched is that it’s narrowed the service proposition to assist the planning of land-based photo voltaic installations — dropping an earlier twin product focus that had included floating-solar installations, too.
Olderheim mentioned the software program can nonetheless be used for planning floating photo voltaic. However he famous there’s extra demand for ground-based installations. “It’s a bigger market,” he mentioned, explaining why they’ve opting to streamline their gross sales strategy.
Glint Photo voltaic additionally isn’t targeted on roof-mounted photo voltaic installations. A few of its prospects are utilizing its software program to assist plan photo voltaic arrays on “big rooftops” as properly, per Olderheim. However, once more, the explanation it’s not focusing effort there’s as a result of it’s going after the biggest demand chunk.
“If you look at the market, about 60% of the market is utility, large scale. And then about 20% is big rooftops, and 20% is residential. So we are going for the biggest market,” he informed TechCrunch. “If you wish to make a big effect on the earth … we will do it by the utility scale, as a result of that’s a lot sooner in case you’re going to construct improve the [solar] vitality on the earth.
“If you think the impact we are making by one solar plant, a big one — like 10 megawatt, maybe with 7,000 or 15,000 solar panels — it’s a very efficient way of growing the energy production fast.”
Increasing affect
One other large focus for the Sequence A money injection is product improvement. Olderheim mentioned the startup shall be increasing its platform to assist prospects plan the place to website batteries that can be utilized to optimize renewable investments by storing vitality.
Components equivalent to grid capability, protected areas, and sound (since batteries produce some noise as soon as operational) are all concerns the software program will be capable of think about, per Olderheim, in addition to offering prospects with assist to make sure a battery is suitable with the proposed photo voltaic array and serving to them share the knowledge with landowners as they work to acquire the required permits.
He emphasizes how a lot the price of photo voltaic installations have dropped during the last decade (down round 90%). However he additionally says that tasks nonetheless aren’t occurring as quick as they should given the existential threats of a heating planet which might be driving waves of disasters, from devastating floods and hurricanes to heatwaves, droughts, and forest fires.
“It takes time to get all the agreements — with the land owner, with the grid, and with the municipality — to [deliver a solar project] and all these processes take time; so that’s one of the reasons we are doing Glint Solar,” he provides.
The startup could be very targeted on software program design to maximise accessibility as one other tactic to assist take away friction from photo voltaic undertaking approvals.
“We are making it very user friendly so everyone in a team can use one software together and work on this problem to make [project delivery] much faster. And you can share everything — with the land owner, with the grid, with the municipality — so they can easily take decisions much faster with the lower risk.”
The platform has a number of “modules” that permit the identical individual to, for instance, “evaluate the site, organize all the projects, and design a solar park,” per Olderheim, supporting undertaking groups to get extra purposes out.
He additionally flags the platform’s cloud-based collaboration options that permit everybody to work “in the same tool,” which he suggests assist give it an edge versus different instruments.
Glint says prospects are reporting its SaaS helps photo voltaic builders to triple their undertaking pipeline on common and consider potential websites 10x sooner than conventional strategies.
After all software program can solely accomplish that a lot. Olderheim agrees that infrastructure funding and regulatory reform are key to additional accelerating photo voltaic rollouts, pointing to grid capability and photo voltaic allowing as the principle areas for lawmakers to sort out.
“Sometimes it takes five years from a [project] to start to get building,” he factors out, including: “I know the EU is looking at this to reduce it to 12 or 24 months. So I think that’s a very good [start].”
Glint Photo voltaic’s Sequence A is led by Smedvig Ventures, with further funding from Antler Nordic and Antler Elevate, Futurum Ventures, and Momentum.
Commenting in an announcement, Jonathan Lerner, associate at Smedvig Ventures mentioned: “The solar industry has done a great job at developing ways to harvest green energy, but now we need better processes to get these plans in motion. This is the gap that Glint Solar is filling. As one of the first unified products for utility projects on the market, solar developers, engineers, analysts and management can find everything they need to locate the best land spaces quickly and accurately. This is a much-needed evolution from manually trawling through data from multiple sources, saving considerable resources in all-important green energy projects.”
