{"id":24517,"date":"2021-05-26T05:53:12","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T05:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/aurora-solar-aims-to-power-the-growing-solar-industry-with-a-250m-round-c.html"},"modified":"2021-05-26T05:53:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T05:53:12","slug":"aurora-solar-aims-to-power-the-growing-solar-industry-with-a-250m-round-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/aurora-solar-aims-to-power-the-growing-solar-industry-with-a-250m-round-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Solar aims to power the growing solar industry with a $250M round C"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aurora Solar had one of those pitches that seemed obvious in retrospect. Instead of going to a house and measuring its roof manually for a solar panel installation, why not use aerial scans and imagery of the whole region? That smart play earned them a $20 million A round<\/a>, a $50 million B round and now, only six months later, a massive $250 million C round as they aim to become the software platform on which the coming solar power expansion will be run.<\/p>\n

The idea is simple enough to explain, but difficult to pull off. There\u2019s lots of data out there about the topography, physical and infrastructural, of most cities. Satellite imagery, aerial lidar scans, light and power lines and usage data and, of course, where and how the sun hits a given location \u2014 this information is readily available. Aurora\u2019s innovation wasn\u2019t just using it, but assembling it into a cohesive system that\u2019s simple and effective enough to be used widely by solar installers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAurora\u2019s core value proposition is the fact that you can do things remotely much faster and more accurately than if you traveled to the site,\u201d explained co-founder and COO Sam Adeyemo.<\/p>\n

Having developed algorithms that ingest the aforementioned data, the service they offer is a very quick turnaround on the tricky question of whether a solar installation makes sense for a potential customer, and if so what it might cost and look like, down to the size and angle of the panels.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong> Aurora Solar<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for the acquisition cost for a customer to be thousands of dollars,\u201d said Adeyemo\u2019s co-founder, CEO Chris Hopper. That\u2019s partly because every installation is custom. He estimated that half the price tag of any setup is \u201csoft cost\u201d \u2014 that is, over and above the actual price of the hardware.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the quote is for $30K, what actually goes on your roof might be $15K, the rest is overhead, design, acquisition cost, yada yada yada,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat\u2019s the next frontier to make solar cost-competitive, and that\u2019s where Aurora comes in. Every time we shave a few dollars off the price of an installation, it opens it up for new consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company doesn\u2019t do its own lidar flights or solar installations, so the $250 million in funding may strike some as rather high for a company making software. Though I did my best to tease out any secret skunkworks projects under way at Aurora, Adeyemo and Hopper patiently explained that enterprise-scale software isn\u2019t cheap, and the funding is proportional to their ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount we raised speaks to the opportunity ahead of us,\u201d said Hopper. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more solar to put on roofs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Solar roof-tile and energy startup SunRoof closes \u20ac4.5M led by Inovo Venture Partners<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Aurora has been used for evaluating about 5 million solar projects so far, about a fifth of which end up being built, Adeyemo estimated. And that\u2019s just a fraction of a fraction. Solar makes up about 2% of the U.S.\u2019s power infrastructure, right now, but that\u2019s on track to increase by an order of magnitude in the next 20 years.<\/p>\n

The new administration has thrown fuel on the fire of the industry\u2019s optimism, and whether or not something like the Green New Deal comes to fruition, the fundamentally different approach to environmental and energy policy means there are more eyeballs directed at clean energy and consequently a lot of checks being written.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt counts for a lot. With heightened awareness about climate change there will be more interest in ways to mitigate it,\u201d said Adeyemo. He gave the example of Texas, which after the recent storms and blackouts had more inquiries per capita than anywhere else in the country. Renewables may be a charged issue in some ways, but solar power is bipartisan and broadly popular across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong> Aurora Solar<\/p>\n

The $250 million round, led by Coatue and with participation from previous investors ICONIQ, Energize Ventures and Fifth Wall, allows the company to go both broad and deep with their product.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically we\u2019ve been more of a design solution; the next phase is to broaden that into a platform that covers more of the process of going solar,\u201d said Hopper. \u201cWe don\u2019t believe this is going to be a niche market \u2014 going from 2 to 20% and beyond, that\u2019s a huge endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The co-founders would not be more specific than that scaling a SaaS company requires significant cash up front, and during the push to come they can\u2019t be worried about whether or when they\u2019ll need to get more capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first five years of the company were quasi-bootstrapped\u2026 we\u2019d raised like a million bucks. So we know what it\u2019s like to grow a company from that perspective, and now we know what it\u2019s like to really need the capital to scale the business,\u201d said Adeyemo. \u201cIf you want to be the platform for a significant percentage of the energy capacity of the country\u2026 you gotta tool up.\u201d<\/p>\n

What exactly tooling up comprises we will soon find out \u2014 the company is planning to announce more news at its upcoming summit<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n

\n

Sunrun\u2019s $3.2 billion Vivint Solar bid challenges Tesla\u2019s energy ambitions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

Biden\u2019s infrastructure plans could boost startups<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Article source: https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2021\/05\/24\/aurora-solar-aims-to-power-the-growing-solar-industry-with-a-250m-round-c\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora Solar had one of those pitches that seemed obvious in retrospect. Instead of going to a house and measuring its roof manually for a solar panel installation, why not <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-24517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-networking-and-communication","tag-network-and-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t