Announcing Popular Power’s Pre-Seed Funding Round

With $1,025,000 in funding, Popular Power launches its innovative software platform empowering solar companies to deliver post-sales excellence

The solar industry is booming, with projections indicating that 20% of the world's electricity demand will be solar-powered by 2024, and distributed solar PV being the fastest-growing source of electricity worldwide. According to the United States Department of Energy, the USA recently reached the milestone of 5 million homes with solar, which is expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2034. Industry-enabling solutions like Popular Power's are critical to advancing this growth and supporting the rapid expansion of the solar industry. In Mexico alone, there are over 8,000 solar installers, highlighting the need for tools that simplify operations.

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Update August 30th, 2024 - Popular Power completed a small follow-on to the Pre-Seed Round, ultimately closing out the round at $1,025,000 USD.

Mexico City, Mexico - July 17, 2024 - Popular Power, a cutting-edge software company, today announced the official launch of its revolutionary platform designed to streamline monitoring, alerts, analytics, and performance tracking for solar companies. The company also announced the successful closing of its Pre-Seed funding round, which saw participation from strategic investors, including Amplifica Capital, Cerulean Ventures, 0bs.mx, Dunn Family Impact Capital, Golden Sail Ventures, 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, user-friendly interface. By integrating solar site monitoring, alerts, analytics, and performance tracking capabilities, the company enables solar providers to gain unprecedented visibility into their operations, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance efficiency and profitability. With the platform, companies can better manage and process alerts, plan Operations & Maintenance activities, and automate reporting to their end users, among other features.

“Solar companies battle with managing a different monitoring platform for each hardware solution they install. A typical solar company is relatively hardware agnostic, so may have 5-6 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 at Popular Power.

The company's co-founders bring extensive experience in the solar space, having managed multiple "next-generation" utilities throughout the Americas, reaching over 30,000 end users with solar energy access 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 so much innovation in the Solar PV software space on the pre-sales side– design, quoting, and proposals– but the post-sales side is still somewhat a desert. As an industry, we can’t keep acting like our job is over when an installation is complete– it’s quite the opposite, in fact. That’s just the beginning of when that solar asset generates value for the user. Distributed solar is a major part of our energy future, so we must empower solar companies to deliver long-term value. That’s what Popular Power is solving for."

Anna Raptis, Principal at 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 faced in 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 provide extraordinary returns, and at the same time address Latin America's problems with innovation. Popular Power is a great example that this is possible."

The inspiration behind Popular Power's name comes from Gretchen Bakke's book "The Grid," specifically the quote: "Everybody was using their fairly expensive, almost identical infrastructure [a grid] only part of the time because it was as cheap to produce their own power as it was to buy it from any centralized source." While this quote refers to the late 19th century when the grid was growing, and people initially preferred producing their own power, the co-founders see it as a nod to the future they envision, where it becomes cheaper and better for individuals to use power from their own source: solar. Popular Power aims to be an enabler of this energy transition.

Popular Power launched it’s product in August 2023 and is already monitoring 39MW of residential and C&I solar sites on its platform. With the successful Pre-Seed funding round, Popular Power plans to expand its team, grow to new customers, and accelerate product development. While primarily marketing to Latin America, the company's product is ready for worldwide use. To access the platform, customers can sign up directly at app.popularpower.io or contact morgan@popularpower.io.

About Popular Power

Popular Power is a software company that empowers solar companies with actionable data and insights to deliver post-sales excellence. By consolidating solar site monitoring into a single platform– independent of hardware brand– Popular Power allows customers to standardize alerts, analytics, and performance tracking, and share automated reports with their end users. Visit popularpower.io to learn more.

Pictured: Hybrytec, a leading developer of photovoltaic projects in Colombia with over 63MWp of installed capacity, relies on the Popular Power platform to monitor its solar sites, including the series of installations totalling 22MWp for the Olímpica chain in Colombia, a project completed in collaboration with Compañia Energética de Occidente. Image courtesy of Hybrytec.