This startup aims to make rooftop solar accessible to smaller households with zero upfront cost

About five years ago, Bolong Chew and Gérald Chablowski, who champion social causes, realised that climate change affects those at the bottom of the pyramid the most. This underprivileged section often lacks the mobility and resources to improve their living conditions (for example, access to air conditioners), and they continue to bear the brunt of the climate crisis.

“Other than this, many people still haven’t grasped the gravity as their daily lifestyles remain relatively unaffected by climate change,” says Chew. “Hence, we felt the need to act towards climate change.”

As the duo started discussing and exploring the idea, they got in touch with ENGIE Factory. The meeting proved to be a game changer in the duo’s lives.

“As we know, the greentech industry is understandably quite opaque and hard to understand from an outsider’s perspective,” Chew says. “We wanted to change this perception through our climate-tech venture.”

Solar AI Technologies, which Chew (CEO) and Chablowski (CTO) started in 2020 in Singapore, is a solar-as-a-service startup. It seeks to make rooftop solar accessible and hassle-free for smaller, underserved property owners by providing them with zero upfront cost.

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“Rooftop solar as a tool is already mature enough to create a positive change. However, the operational ability to drive adoption was missing, hence the decision to launch Solar AI,” explains Chew.

Solar AI was started as a data analytics company with computer vision models to automatically assess the potential and feasibility of one’s rooftop based on geospatial imagery.

Traditionally, the assessment takes up to 30 to 40 per cent of the cost of a project; it can sometimes exceed the costs of the panel installations. By incorporating artificial intelligence into the process, Solar AI can deliver much quicker and at lower costs, Chew claims.

“Over time, while we have built up these models, we felt the biggest lever for change/solar deployment is lack of trust and awareness,” says Chew. “This is why we embarked on ‘zero upfront costs’ offers to provide the customer with instant rooftop solar savings.”

The customer journey

A potential customer can use its solar simulator on Solar AI’s website for an initial assessment of one’s solar potential and electricity bill savings. An arranged remote site survey follows this to assess the feasibility of installing the panels on the rooftop.

The company will then send proposals and offers to determine the property’s suitability. Customers can then choose either its five-to-year plans for rent-to-own or direct purchase.

The firm charges customers a fixed monthly fee (usually lower than their electricity bill savings) in the rent-to-own model — a prominent model executed by sunrun in the US and Enpal in Germany.

When a customer is enrolled in the rent-to-own programme, he/she will get free daily monitoring and maintenance. It will then convert the ownership after the contract period.

If a customer decides to shift to a new location, the startup will assist him/her in transferring the service to the new homeowner.

“How much money one can save depends on the household’s energy consumption amount and patterns, the current electricity retailer and utility rate, and the number of solar panels their roof can accommodate,” Chew clarifies. A typical SP Group customer consuming 1,500kWh of electricity a month can expect to save more than S$300 each month with a 12kWp system of 30 solar panels.

Also Read: SolarHome extends its Series A with US$2M to grow the customer base of its pay-as-you-go solar solution

“We have done more than 50 projects relying on this mechanism, and we believe it is what works best for us currently,” he says.

Solar AI only utilises Tier 1 panels from popular brands and picks panels, which carry a 30-year linear performance warranty.

For the next 12 months, Solar AI will focus on Singapore. In 2024, it aims to expand to the Philippines and Malaysia.

“We have already started laying the foundation for market expansion. We have 7,000 and 8,000 monthly readers from these markets, respectively. The goal is to convert more than 5,000 properties across Southeast Asia to solar by 2025 and decrease up to 84,394 tonnes of carbon per year,” he goes on.

Funding is a challenge

Solar AI started the project with pre-seed funding of S$450,000 from ENGIE Group in 2020. However, for a highly capital-intensive business like this, this is not adequate to run the project.

Loans from large institutions and banks are the only options. However, they fund mainly large projects. “We serve smaller projects at higher volumes. So, we rely on project financing. We have S$4.5 million earmarked for our portfolios,” Chew adds.

In terms of competition, Singapore has players such as SolarHome, a pay-as-you-go solar solutions startup with operations in Indonesia and Cambodia. However, SolarHome’s primarily focuses on energy access in developing markets and primarily on off-grid systems.

“We are looking at a different customer segment; specifically customers with grid-connected systems, which we believe are a much bigger segment in the market,” shares Chew.

There are also some commercial zero upfront cost solar offers in Singapore. “These are typically limited to large projects, excluding as much as 85 per cent of viable solar properties. As a tech-focused startup, we bring down costs and are thus able to offer this programme to this vastly underserved market segment,” Chew concludes.

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