Backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, YC alum SolarMente needs to assist democratize solar energy in Spain

Photo voltaic is without doubt one of the cleanest types of power, and the EU is set to ensure it taps the giant ball of nuclear fusion in the sky to scale back its dependence on fossil fuels. Certainly, as a part of the REPowerEU plan, the European Fee is contemplating a path to introduce guidelines that may mandate set up of rooftop photo voltaic power panels on most new and public and industrial buildings by 2026.

However not all nations in Europe get a number of daylight. You’d assume Spain could be massive on photo voltaic power technology because it’s one of many sunniest nations in Europe — peak sun hours in Spain put it on par with the U.S. West Coast, in spite of everything. Nevertheless, Spain nonetheless lags behind Germany or the Netherlands when it comes to put in home photo voltaic panels, which might have been partly because of a historic “sun tax“, a tax on photo voltaic installations, that the nation scrapped solely in 2018. A number of years on, some startups are lastly taking steps to profit from this chance.

Barcelona-based SolarMente, goals to show photo voltaic installations right into a mainstay of Spanish homes. Its CEO and co-founder, Wouter Draijer, instructed TechCrunch that he was spurred to begin the corporate when he flew to Barcelona and had a chicken’s eye view of how few Spanish rooftops had photo voltaic panels in comparison with his house nation, The Netherlands. He teamed up with Victor Gardrinier, a French nationwide who studied at HEC Montreal and Stanford, to begin the corporate.

Draijer stated the corporate began off as an installer of photo voltaic panels in Spain, however after the pandemic, it determined it ought to supply a photo voltaic power administration system. In hindsight, that was most likely a smart transfer, contemplating the panel set up market is already coated by specialised firms, and the falling price of panels might make DIY efforts extra enticing for householders. It additionally has a couple of startups to compete with, together with Lumio Solar, which received probably the most sustainable startup award at Madrid’s South Summit 2023, and Tornasol, whose kits could be put in on balconies and paid for in installments via BNPL platform SeQura.

“Solar is not a product,” Draijer stated, explaining why most Spaniards can’t or simply don’t need to pay upfront for photo voltaic panels. What he means is that individuals care extra about what panels can do for them relatively than proudly owning them.

That’s why SolarMente provides subscription-based power administration providers, which embrace putting in photo voltaic panels with out upfront prices. And as a substitute of concentrating on individuals who stay in flats, the corporate prefers to promote to particular person homes as a result of it’s simpler from a regulation standpoint, and in addition as a result of the chance is greater, Draijer stated.

“We start with solar, but most of our customers can come back to us because we analyze their data, and we put a battery and EV charger, a heat pump, and then we start managing that energy.”

Just lately, the Y Combinator alum added actor Leonardo DiCaprio to its cap desk, changing into his first funding in Spain.

Photo voltaic arbitrage

Administration of how a lot power is consumed and when is a should with photo voltaic, as a result of, as Gardrinier explained in an X thread again in 2023, “there is an arbitrage between the price at which households buy energy from the grid and the price at which households sell energy back to the grid.”

Gardrinier instructed TechCrunch that the arbitrage was what impressed him to deal with the corporate’s power administration, and he was initially considering seeing how households with photo voltaic panels might commerce their photo voltaic power with friends on the blockchain.

That curiosity helped SolarMente win a blockchain-focused hackathon and in addition to launch a virtual battery service, however the subsequent step of the startup’s journey doesn’t contain full-on buying and selling. As an alternative, the startup needs to allow householders to optimize their power consumption with an excellent app that helps them resolve when to devour or promote the power the photo voltaic panels generate.

Of the group, Gardrinier can be probably the most carefully concerned with fundraising, and gave some context on SolarMente’s financing up to now: “As I like to think of it, with every round you derisk your company and your team a little bit more. So with our YC round, the first $2 million seed round, with a very basic team, we showed that solar could maybe work in Spain. And then we did a much bigger round last year of mostly debt; we built a huge debt structure to finance our solar installations. And with that we wanted to prove that you can offer solar as a subscription service at the price of your gym membership, and make it democratized.”

DiCaprio’s newly introduced funding is a component of a bigger seed spherical of fairness financing targeted on getting SolarMente the place it must be to lift a Collection A. “We’re using this round to really power our super app for home energy,” Gardrinier stated.

Movie star endorsement

Though that is DiCaprio’s first funding in Spain, the actor has been investing in tech startups since no less than 2011. He has additionally been famously vocal about local weather change, to which he referred to as consideration in his acceptance speech on the 2016 Oscars ceremony.

Not all the actor’s investments should do with local weather and inexperienced tech, however sustainability is a theme throughout lots of these, which embrace AllBirds, Beyond Meat and styrofoam substitute firm Cruz Foam. For SolarMente, it additionally helped that one in every of their summer season 2021 YC batchmates, water threat administration platform Waterplan, was already in contact with DiCaprio.

Draijer and Gardrinier finally met DiCaprio, Gardrinier stated, and “every time we discussed the business and vision for energy transition, [DiCaprio] would put up his phone and show us one of the projects he’s working on — decentralized storage, etc.”

It possible helped that SolarMente’s method wasn’t fully new to the actor. DiCaprio beforehand invested in Bright, a startup that works on putting in solar energy in houses and companies throughout Mexico. Similar to SolarMente, it graduated from Y Combinator, and in July 2023 raised a $31.5 million Series C.

May Vibrant and SolarMente companion someday? We’d say possibly. However first, SolarMente needs to additional increase throughout Spain, the place its subscription photo voltaic supply simply grew to become out there nationwide, Draijer instructed TechCrunch.

Contemplating how sunny Spain is and the way underequipped it nonetheless is, there’s little question that SolarMente has room to develop. Whereas its deal with particular person houses makes it a considerably “upscale” providing, it could possibly nonetheless play a component in decreasing the stress that fluctuating power costs have brought on to Spanish households. As a bonus, its method might additionally play a job in facilitating EV adoption, one other space by which Spain has room for improvement.