RatedPower, a SaaS startup developing cloud-based solutions to help companies discover smarter ways to maximize the potential of solar photovoltaic, announced today that it has raised €5.2 million in Series A funding. The financing round was led by Seaya Ventures, the European VC firm behind success stories like Glovo, Wallbox and Cabify, with additional participation of US-based investors.
Founded in 2017, the Madrid based startup aims to increase the competitiveness of solar energy, and deliver a seamless customer experience. The fresh capital will be used to drive international growth and expansion in key solar markets, especially in the US, expedite product and feature development, and accelerate the RatedPower mission to become the SaaS suite of renewables.
Global cumulative solar PV capacity has continuously grown since 2015, being the fastest growing source of energy over the past decade. By 2024, cumulative solar PV capacity is expected to reach over 1.4 terawatts, and 40% of it will come from utility-scale power plants. Seeking systemic efficiency is the only effective way to fight climate change, and to deliver on the Paris Agreement.
But optimizing, designing, and engineering solar plants is still a complex and overwhelming process. RatedPower was founded by Andrea Barber, Miguel Angel Torrero, and Juan Romero after experiencing these inefficiencies firsthand for many years, and realizing the huge improvement potential by using digital technologies to make solar energy implementation cheaper and more efficient.
pvDesign, RatedPower’s software, is the all-in-one tool to speed up the optimization, design and engineering process of solar photovoltaic projects. It helps teams boost their efficiency, reduces the construction costs of PV plants and LCOE, while increasing accuracy and assets profitability. RatedPower’s pvDesign has been growing solidly, and is now a leading end-to-end software to instantly carry out the design, optimization, and engineering of solar farms in all its stages.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (“IRENA”), costs of electricity from new solar PV farms have fallen 82% since 2010, mainly due to the increasing efficiency of PV panels. Solar design software, such as RatedPower’s, is next in line to continue cutting down the price of solar energy.
Andrea Barber, co-founder and CEO of RatedPower, stated: “Over the past four years, we’ve built a unique SaaS platform that has smoothed out the process of building solar plants in almost every country on the planet. This is an important milestone in our journey – both for RatedPower as a company and for our clients – that will enable us to expand our solution, impact new markets, and help us bring closer our vision of making solar the main energy source, accelerating the energy transition.”
