It is often held that solar panels need as much sun as they can get. That’s true, but only to an extent, as heat and other hazards can become a serious problem after that and solar panels can deteriorate quite quickly.
SmartHelio wants to help prevent this from happening. The startup uses AI technology to measure live data (current, voltage, weather parameters) from solar installations and offers suggestions for solutions when a solar panel starts to underperform. The company just raised $5 million to scale up its product.
“Every summer, my parents would take my brother and me to our ancestral village in India, which had no electricity. Due to the lack of good governance, it took a long time before the village got electricity. This has piqued my interest in decentralized energy solutions that do not require external intervention,” Govinda Upadhyay, CEO of SmartHelio, told businessroundups.org.
“I am always thinking about how we can accelerate clean energy adoption. During my dealings with solar companies in India, Europe and Africa, I realized that many of these companies were struggling with the performance of their solar installations, often due to the late detection of faults. This inspired me to start SmartHelio,” he added.
Upadhyay met his co-founder Neeraj Dasila, who was working in the energy department of the Indian government at the time. His journey is similar to Upadhyay’s in that he grew up in a remote Himalayan village with little infrastructure.
The company wades into a rapidly developing industry, but it has remarkably few direct competitors – the thrust of software/AI companies seems to be focused on where to install solar or how to make solar more accessible. Glint Solar, for example, raised $3 million earlier this year for its AI-powered analytics tool to figure out where to build solar plants. Aurora Solar is in a similar space, closing a $250 million round in mid-2021. On the installation side, recent funding rounds include Enact Systems’ $11 million Series A, Zolar’s $105 million Series C and Project Solar’s $23 million haul.
The funding round
SmartHelio wash part of the W22 batch of Y Combinator and the incubator participated in this round alongside a wave of other investors from its native Switzerland and the US, including Collab Fund, Serpentine VC, ACE & Company, Pegasus Tech Venture, Gaingel VC, Soma Capital and a number of angel investors.
