Photo voltaic vitality is booming, which is sweet 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 akin to E.ON, Recurrent Power, and Statkraft minimize 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 information from a number of sources to assist velocity up Photo voltaic challenge assessments. The platform options adaptable structure designs and yield estimates, together with country-specific geographic info system (GIS) information and topographic evaluation to make it easer for photo voltaic builders to judge potential websites. Cloud-based collaboration options enable groups to entry important challenge information. The platform can be used as a challenge presentation support by serving up 3D-rendered challenge 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 keeping with CEO and co-founder Harald Olderheim. It’s now saying an $8 million Collection A to maintain stoking the expansion hearth by increasing into extra markets in Europe.
Its most important areas for patrons at the moment are France, Germany, the Nordics, and the U.Ok. however with the brand new funding, the March 2020-launched SaaS will likely 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 centered 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 effectively, per Olderheim. However, once more, the explanation it’s not focusing effort there may be 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 instructed TechCrunch. “If you wish to make a big effect on this planet … we will do it by the utility scale, as a result of that’s a lot sooner if you happen to’re going to construct improve the [solar] vitality on this planet.
“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 impression
One other huge focus for the Collection A money injection is product improvement. Olderheim mentioned the startup will likely be increasing its platform to assist prospects plan the place to web site batteries that can be utilized to optimize renewable investments by storing vitality.
Elements akin to grid capability, protected areas, and sound (since batteries produce some noise as soon as operational) are all issues the software program will be capable of think about, per Olderheim, in addition to offering prospects with assist to make sure a battery is appropriate with the proposed photo voltaic array and serving to them share the data with landowners as they work to acquire the mandatory permits.
He emphasizes how a lot the price of photo voltaic installations have dropped over the past decade (down round 90%). However he additionally says that tasks nonetheless aren’t taking place as quick as they should given the existential threats of a heating planet which can 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 may be very centered on software program design to maximise accessibility as one other tactic to assist take away friction from photo voltaic challenge 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 enable the identical individual to, for instance, “evaluate the site, organize all the projects, and design a solar park,” per Olderheim, supporting challenge groups to get extra purposes out.
He additionally flags the platform’s cloud-based collaboration options that enable 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 challenge 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 Collection A is led by Smedvig Ventures, with extra funding from Antler Nordic and Antler Elevate, Futurum Ventures, and Momentum.
Commenting in an announcement, Jonathan Lerner, companion 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.”
