According to Software Chain, the solar industry is experiencing rapid growth, with projections indicating that 20% of global electricity demand will come from solar energy by 2024.
Software chain Popular Power today announced the official launch of a platform designed to optimize monitoring, alerting, analytics and performance tracking for solar companies.
The company also announced the successful closing of its US$875,000 pre-seed financing round, which featured participation from strategic investors including Amplifica Capital, Cerulean.vc, 0bs.mx, Dunn Family Impact Capital, and Mercy Corps Ventures .
Popular Power's B2B platform consolidates a range of critical functions for solar companies in the residential and C&I spaces into a single, easy-to-use interface.
By integrating solar site monitoring, alerting, analytics, and performance tracking capabilities, the company enables solar providers to gain visibility into their operations, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to improve efficiency and profitability.
With the platform, companies can better manage and process alerts, plan operations and maintenance activities, and automate reports for their end users, among other features.
"Solar companies struggle with managing a different monitoring platform for each hardware solution they install. A typical solar company is hardware agnostic, so they may have 5 to 6 different hardware products they install.
This results in segmented data, alerts and analytics, leading to limited insights and a heavy reliance on manual processes,” explains Morgan Babbs, co-founder of Popular Power.
The company's co-founders bring extensive experience in the solar space, having founded and managed multiple "next-generation utilities" in the Americas, reaching more than 30,000 end users with access to solar energy in their previous ventures.
“Our goal is to empower distributed solar companies with actionable data and insights to deliver post-sales excellence,” said co-founder Morgan Babbs.
“There has been a lot of innovation in software for the PV world on the pre-sales side: design, pricing and proposals, but the after-sales side is still a desert.
As an industry, we can no longer act as if our work ends when an installation is completed; In fact, it's the opposite. That's just the beginning of when that solar asset generates value for the user. Distributed solar is an important part of our energy future, so we must empower solar companies to deliver long-term value. This is the vision of Popular Power.”
Hybrytec, a developer of photovoltaic projects in the residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) segments in Colombia, with more than 63MWp of installed capacity, relies on Popular Power's platform to monitor its solar sites.
"Popular Power has allowed us to unify information in a single platform characterized by its stability and availability, which allows us to make better-informed and more efficient decisions," says Juan Diego Trujillo, director at Hybrytec.
"This has had a very positive impact on our team and has also increased our customer satisfaction."
Anna Raptis, director of Amplifica Capital, commented on the investment: "Morgan and Manuel are entrepreneurs who represent the most relevant values for Amplifica Capital. Their proposal is an excellent example of how technology addresses the challenges facing Latin America, by offering a solution that contributes to mitigating the effects of climate change.
As investors, we look for business models that have the potential to deliver extraordinary returns while addressing Latin America's problems with innovation. Popular Power is a great example that this is possible."
Notably, the company launched in August 2023 and is already monitoring 36 MW of solar sites on its platform. With the pre-seed funding round, Popular Power plans to expand its team, grow new customers, and accelerate product development. While primarily marketed in Latin America, the company's product is ready for use globally.
