Change isn’t easy. Especially when the ambition is to drive a global energy transition and disrupt the renewable energy industry.
Renewable energy in commercial & industrial (C&I) buildings is ripe for disruption. Daily we hear from C&I landlords and tenants: The process is too complex, slow, and expensive. And, it’s too fragmented. That’s why there’s just 5% of solar adoption in this segment.
Customers tell us they want buying renewable energy to be as easy as hitting “add to cart” on an e-commerce site. For that experience, they need a full-stack solution.
Many companies are addressing slices of the problem - whether it’s remote site assessment or market access or billing. That makes sense, as it's the traditional way to build: solve a specific, targeted problem. Many are doing great and impactful work. But, what we hear from our customers and the market is that they want a single, simple solution across the end to end that drives more revenue and more savings.
What does a full-stack C&I energy solution look like?
To deliver on the demand for simplicity, we believe customers need an experience that is a single point of access across the entire end to end energy journey. Critical to the success of this model is the ability to deliver significantly more revenue and more savings than through the piecemeal approach.
Let’s break up this end to end into 2 parts - deployment, and delivery:
Deployment: Get systems on roofs
Portfolio assessment - Providing instant analysis and financial offers for an entire real estate portfolio based on remote data & advanced forecasting. Critically, our offers are based on a unique model of upsizing installations to generate maximum energy, exporting the surplus for more guaranteed revenue.
On-site PPAs & contracts - Facilitating iron clad, repeatable PPAs and contracts across a landlord’s and tenant’s portfolio, which they can use regardless of counterparty or lease length.
Procurement & installation - With our manufacturing and EPC partners, we’re able to drive operationally efficient processes for 25% cheaper installations. By owning the full stack, we reduce soft costs and leverage economies of scale.
Project financing - Access to financing is a huge reason why solar deployments stall. As a full-stack solution we have embedded project financing, so customers have the flexibility to choose whether they want to fund, or have InRange fund, the installation.
Delivery: Maximise value per electron
Operations & monitoring - To ensure uptime and optimal energy generation, operations and monitoring is part of the end-to-end solution we provide our customers. No need to engage any other party.
Exported energy sale - Our Marketplace of off-takers, including major Iron Mountain Data Centers, buy the excess generation from our upsized installations. Export tariffs are guaranteed for the long term, providing increased and reliable revenue.
Optimised distribution - Things change: energy prices go negative, another off-taker makes a more lucrative offer, or the grid is suddenly congested. Our optimisation engine makes dynamic decisions and leverages EVs and storage assets to send electrons where they maximise value.
Billing & settlement - With all those bells and whistles, imagine the headache if landlords or solar developers had to bill tenants and external off-takers themselves. As a full-stack solution, we deliver clear and accurate bills across their asset portfolio.
Wait, so are you just building more software than the other guys?
We've built a lot of software :). The InRange platform streamlines and automates deployment and delivery, allowing us to give our customers the unified simple experience they love.
But, it’s not just software. To challenge the incumbent utilities - and be a challenger utility - we fundamentally believe we also need to own the generation.
In our definition, a full-stack solution is vertically integrated. That means not just selling software to the incumbents that have been building into the industry, but building that infrastructure ourselves.
Does full-stack mean you’re doing it all alone?
Absolutely not! A core tenant of a full-stack solution is its participation and enablement of the broader ecosystem. Partnering and collaboration is key to success:
Grid & network operators - Exporting energy and reducing grid congestion is contingent upon close collaboration and data sharing with the grid and network operators.
EPCs - We work closely with experienced, Tier 1 EPC partners who bring their deep expertise and focus on health and safety to every InRange deployment. Customers get a single point of contact with InRange, and EPC partners get full installation calendars of upsized and more profitable installations.
Financiers - By partnering with top tier financial institutions, we’re able to deploy more capital towards bigger installations, for more revenue and savings.
Legal - Putting our customers’ minds (and legal departments) at ease with institutionally accepted PPAs and contracts relies on leveraging some great legal minds. Our legal partners have brought phenomenal innovation in contracts that bring our model to life.
Does a company have to be full-stack the way you described it to make a difference?
Surely not, but we think it helps! Our thesis on full-stack solutions is based on the signals we’ve received from customers and the market on how they need the energy journey to be simpler and more scalable, so they can earn more and save more.
We’re very happily not alone in our journey to drive the energy transition, and are keen to learn from others in the industry. And as challengers, we love to be challenged!
Thoughts? Agree or disagree? Or want to enjoy the value of a full-stack solution? We’d love to hear from you: hello@inrange.io.