The solar power industry has seen record growth over the last few years, with the annual global solar PV capacity increasing by 87% between 2022 and 2023. However, more still needs to be done to achieve the goals established in the Paris Agreement. Glint Solar is accelerating the adoption of solar power and mitigating climate change through its SaaS platform, which enables solar developers to evaluate and pre-design sites in a matter of minutes.

Founded in 2020 by Harald Olderheim, Even Kvelland and John Modin, the Norwegian startup recognised that while solar is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways of curbing the climate crisis, projects move too slowly. With 73% of solar development companies’ time spent on projects that don’t make it to the permitting stage, there is an urgent need for better tools and insights on solar development. Glint Solar overcomes this by making the permitting stages easier, smarter and faster.

With Glint Solar’s platform, solar developers can triple their project pipeline and evaluate project sites 10 times faster than traditional methods. The platform blends adaptable layout designs and yield estimates with country-specific GIS data and topographic analysis. The user-friendly collaboration hub gives teams full oversight and control over essential project data. 3D-rendered project layouts created in seconds allow users to slash land negotiation times and powerfully communicate projects to stakeholders.

Gustav Alberius, Chief Strategy Officer at Turn Energy, a customer of Glint Solar, said: “The Glint Solar software has significantly boosted our development processes by having a centralised platform where we can evaluate buildability, permit conditions and yield as early as in the origination process. It has effectively allowed us to triple our project pipeline and reduce development costs. We’re very excited to follow Glint Solar’s continued innovations in the solar software space.”

Glint Solar has experienced rapid growth since its $3 million Seed round in 2022, with its customer base more than tripling in the last 12 months. The software is used by small to large solar developers and energy companies in more than 35 countries globally, including Recurrent Energy, Statkraft, and E.ON.

This latest investment will be used to expand into new markets and to improve the overall product offering, serving both existing and new solar developers. To support this, the company will grow its sales and product development teams, aiming to more than double its current headcount of 30 over the next 12 months. Looking ahead to 2025, the company will continue to drive disruption among solar developments with best-in-class insights and tools to ‘get it right from the beginning’. The product will grow into a wider platform to solve key challenges for developers, including a battery energy storage systems (BESS) feature to help project developers identify where to develop energy storage units.

Harald Olderheim, CEO and Co-founder of Glint Solar, said: “To counteract the effects of climate change, renewable energy needs to be adopted at a faster pace. The UN IPCC report says that 70-85% of the world’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of a warming planet. Luckily, utility-scale solar is quickly becoming the most cost-efficient form of energy one can build – in Texas, for example, it has overtaken coal as the most important energy source. The remaining factor is to also make solar energy development time efficient. Software is at the heart of the solution and this investment allows us to continue to push the boundaries of making complex, fragmented data and insights easily accessible, directly impacting the speed of global solar adoption.”

Jonathan Lerner, Partner at Smedvig Ventures said: “The solar industry has done a great job at developing ways to harvest green energy, but now we need better processes to get these plans in motion. This is the gap that Glint Solar is filling. As one of the first unified products for utility projects on the market, solar developers, engineers, analysts and management can find everything they need to locate the best land spaces quickly and accurately. This is a much-needed evolution from manually trawling through data from multiple sources, saving considerable resources in all-important green energy projects.”

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