Lithuania’s PVcase secures $100 million, aims to cut solar project design process from weeks to roughly 20 minutes

Vilnius-based PVcase (PhotoVoltaic computer aided solar engineering) has secured $100 million in a new funding round. Aiming to streamline and homongenise the process for engineers working in the solar industry, PVcase has earmarked a portion of the new funds for continued M&A activities. Since late 2018, PVcase has raised $123 million.

The $100 million investment was provided by Highland Europe, Energize, and existing investor Elephant.

With temperatures across the globe reaching record highs on a seemingly daily basis, the need for efficient, renewable energy sources is rather apparent. One solution is, of course, solar energy, a sector we’ve seen an ever-increasing interest from both consumers and investors.

While much fanfare can be made about a steady stream of sun-powered, little-to-no carbon emission technology flooding the market, an often overlooked component of this solution is the engineering industry that designs makes all the pieces play nicely together. An industry that’s sorely missing a digitalisation component and at present, struggling to keep pace with demand.

As this demand skyrockets, engineers are increasingly turning to software platforms to automate a number of design and operation tasks, however, the data sources that power these platforms are often stored in outdated formats - PDFs and/or hard copy records.

Compound this conundrum with the fact that many of these platforms were designed to automate only a handful of tasks and are often not cross-compatible, today’s solar industry engineer can use up to 70 different data sets to patchwork together a workflow. Herein lies what PVcase refers to as “data risk”.

In offering on a single end-to-end solution for engineers, PVcase says customers can cut their project design process from weeks to roughly 20 minutes.

Founded in 2017, the company has operated almost exclusively from its revenue stream, raising a ‘mere’ $23 million prior to this round, all the while expanding into 75 countries. In early June of the year, PVcase announced the acquisition of US-based competitor Anderson Optimization, giving the company not only a significant market share but crucial brand recognition in the US.