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Solar energy is booming, which is good news for us Glent Solar. The Norwegian SaaS startup has built a platform that helps energy giants and large solar developers like E.ON, Recurrent Energy, and Statkraft reduce the time it takes to plan and pre-design solar installations to accelerate the transformation process. to renewable energy sources.
Glint pulls data from multiple sources to help speed up solar project evaluations. The platform features adaptable layout designs and productivity estimates, along with country-specific Geographic Information System (GIS) data and topographic analysis to make it easier for solar developers to evaluate potential sites. Cloud-based collaboration features allow teams to access essential project data. The platform can also be used as a project presentation aid by rendering 3D project layouts “in seconds”.
Since TechCrunch last spoke with the climate startup in June 2022, when it closed a $3 million seed round, its customer base has increased nearly 10-fold, according to CEO and co-founder Harald Olderheim. It is now announcing an $8 million Series A to continue fanning the growth fires by expanding into more markets in Europe.
The main customer regions currently are France, Germany, the Nordics and the UK, but with the new funding, the SaaS which launched in March 2020 will expand its sales teams to target customers in the “rest of Europe”, including Italy and Spain. Olderheim says.
One notable change since the launch of Glint Solar is that it has narrowed its service offering to support the planning of ground-based solar installations – dropping the previous dual product focus that included floating solar installations as well.
The software can still be used to plan floating solar, Olderheim said. But he noted that there is greater demand for ground-based facilities. “It’s a bigger market,” he said, explaining why they chose to simplify their sales approach.
Glint Solar also does not focus on roof-mounted solar installations. Some of its customers use its software to help plan solar arrays on “large rooftops” as well, in Olderheim. But, again, the reason they’re not focusing efforts there is because they’re going after the bulk of the demand.
“If you look at the market, about 60% of the market is large-scale utilities. Then about 20% is large rooftops, and 20% is residential. So we’re moving towards the largest market,” he told TechCrunch. In making a big impact in the world… We can do it through the utility scale, because that will be much faster if you’re going to build an increase in (solar) energy in the world.
“If you think about the impact we’re having with a single solar plant, a large plant — like 10 megawatts, maybe with 7,000 or 15,000 solar panels — it’s a very effective way to quickly increase energy production.”
Expand the effect
Another big focus of the Series A money infusion is product development. Olderheim said the startup will expand its platform to help customers plan where to put batteries that can be used to improve renewable investments via energy storage.
Factors like grid capacity, protected areas and sound (since batteries produce some noise once they’re turned on) are all considerations the software will be able to take into account, according to Olderheim, as well as providing customers with support to ensure the battery is compatible with their proposed solar array and helping them exchange information with owners lands while they work to obtain the necessary permits.
It underscores how much the cost of solar installations has fallen over the past decade (about 90%). But he also says projects are still not happening as quickly as they need to given the existential threats of a warming planet that is leading to waves of disasters, from devastating floods and hurricanes to heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
“It takes time to get all the agreements – with the landowner, with the grid, with the municipality – to (deliver a solar project) and all these processes take time; “That’s one of the reasons we did Glint Solar,” he adds.
The startup is focusing heavily on designing software to maximize accessibility as another tactic to help remove friction from solar project approvals.
“We make it very easy to use so that everyone on the team can use one software together and work on that problem to make (project delivery) much faster. And you can share everything — with the landowner, the network, the municipality — so they can easily make decisions in a more precise manner.” Much faster and with less risk.
The platform has multiple “modules” that allow the same person to, for example, “evaluate the site, organize all the projects, and design a solar park,” according to Olderheim, supporting project teams to get more applications.
He also points to the platform’s cloud-based collaboration features that allow everyone to work “in the same tool,” which he suggests helps give it an edge against other tools.
Glint says customers report that its SaaS helps solar developers triple their project pipeline on average and evaluate potential sites 10 times faster than traditional methods.
Of course, software can only do so much. Olderheim agrees that infrastructure investment and regulatory reform are key to further accelerating solar deployment, pointing to grid capacity and solar permitting as key areas lawmakers must address.
“Sometimes it takes five years from (the project) to start building,” he points out, adding: “I know the European Union is looking at this to reduce it to 12 or 24 months. So I think this is a very good (start).”
Glint Solar’s Series A is led by Smedvig Ventures, with additional investments from Antler Nordic, Antler Elevate, Futurum Ventures, and Momentum.
Commenting, Jonathan Lerner, Partner at Smedvig Ventures, said: “The solar industry has done a great job developing ways to harvest green energy, but now we need better processes to implement these plans. This is a gap that Glent Solar fills. As one of the first unified products for utility projects on the market, solar developers, engineers and analysts can And management can find everything they need to quickly and accurately identify the best land areas. This is a much-needed advancement from manually trawling through data from multiple sources, saving significant resources on critical green energy projects.
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