Brasília, October 16, 2022
Cedro Capital, fund manager based in Brasilia (Brazil), announced the investment in SolarView, a company that develops technological solutions for the solar energy generation market. The investment involves product evolution, development of new functionalities in the SaaS platform for monitoring solar power plants, as well as commercial expansion and product distribution.
“During these years, we have followed the evolution of SolarView, which is already present in most of the solar generator installations in the country. More recently, the company developed a recurring business model for marketing its SaaS platform, SolarView PRO. This was decisive for the investment decision by Cedro Capital”, said Alessandro Machado, partner-director of Cedro Capital.
SolarView was born in 2013, in Belo Horizonte/MG, a year after the publication of Aneel Resolution 482/2012, which started allowing people and companies to generate energy for consumption and in the compensation model with the energy supplied by distributors.
Today, energy generated by capturing the sun’s rays is the second most used source in the world. This is the conclusion of a survey in the report “Global Market Outlook for Solar Power 2022-2026”, published by SolarPower Europe, the European solar industry association.
In Brazil, more than 1.2 million distributed photovoltaic power systems have already been installed, with installed capacity growth of more than 30% by 2022, compared to 2021. Recently, the country surpassed the historic mark of 12 gigawatts (GW) of operational power from the distributed solar photovoltaic source, according to the Brazilian Photovoltaic Solar Energy Association (ABSOLAR).
However, this represents less than 1.5% of the total energy consumers in Brazil, which shows all its growth potential.
Innovations
In 2015, SolarView launched, in an industry first, the SolarView Datalogger, the first universal data logger. With an Internet of Things (IoT) concept, the device collects, stores, and transmits data from Photovoltaic Inverters.
“The main differential with the competition is that it is universal, that is, it communicates with virtually all inverter brands present, while other equipment communicates exclusively with inverters of a certain brand,” says Aécio Bolzon, SolarView’s CEO.
Two years later, the company launched the SolarView application. The platform allows the owner of a power plant to monitor generation and consumption in an integrated way, enabling more transparency and agility in energy management.
It was during this same period that the company approached Cedro Capital and began to build a fluid relationship. Until, this year, he started the fundraising process.
“The goal of this investment is to consolidate our leadership in the market and evolve our solutions and technologies. We have always had and have a role, which is to bring innovation to the solar energy market. Thus, we are working on an ecosystem of solutions that will help the integrating companies to take advantage of the solar aftermarket as a business opportunity”, emphasizes Bolzon.
Gradually, SolarView has fostered innovation in the industry. In 2018, it launched the Smart Meter SolarView, an IoT device, which measures, stores and transmits electrical data for detailing energy flows in the Consuming Unit. Also in the same year, SolarView received the 2018 Energy Award, promoted by Shell Youth Initiative, in the Energy Innovation category.
In 2020, it presented to the market SolarView PRO, a SaaS (Software As a Service) solution for the after-sales management of integrator companies – they design, sell, install, and monitor the plant.
The following year SolarView released a new version of the Smart Meter SolarView, called 2.0, which brought a series of new facilities for its installation and configuration. Also this year, the SolarView Super App was launched, which allows the Integrator to leverage its after-sales to develop its recurring business model.
Currently, there are more than 1,200 subscribers and over 160,000 plants monitored throughout the country. With Cedro Capital’s contribution, SolarView’s goal is to reach 3 thousand subscribers by 2023, with a 170% growth.
