Following The Sun To Maximize Profits, Whatever The Weather

Startup develops sophisticated software to drive solar power sales

Solar power is big business. It will account for almost a third of world’s energy by the end of the decade.

That means competition among energy producers is fierce. And even the smallest improvement in cost or efficiency can have a huge impact in profits.

SolarGik, a Jerusalem-based startup, has developed panels that are able to squeeze the last drops of sunlight from the edges of the day.

They’re fitted with remote-controlled motors that constantly adjust their angle of tilt to track the sun’s movement, from the moment it rises to the moment it sets.  

That alone can increase energy production by as much as 25 per cent. It’s becoming standard across the industry, but SolarGik adds value with smart software that effectively “plays the market”.

Solar energy is highly predictable in some ways – you know for certain when the sun will rise and when it will set. But you can’t know, hour by hour, how cloudy it’s going to be or whether it will rain, both of which have a huge impact on energy production.

Electricity companies constantly juggle supplies of solar power with energy from non-renewable sources, which may be costlier, but is more consistent.

“Solar trackers can very quickly ramp up and generate a lot more energy early in the morning,” Mo Horowitz, VP of Business Development at SolarGik, tells NoCamels.

“And then even as the sun starts setting, they’re still generating peak energy for a few more hours. They’re able to generate nearly full amounts of energy all the way until the sun literally drops out.”

But after that, they’re done for the day. “As solar stops producing and more people finish work, start going home, turning on the washing machines, air conditioners, and whatever, you have a very, very quick ramp up time that the non-renewables are required to do.”

Electricity companies don’t fix rates for the energy they buy. They change throughout the day, every half hour, as supply and demand fluctuates.

Early in the morning, and late in the afternoon, there’s less sunlight, so less solar energy is being generated, and the price is high. In the middle of the day there’s often an over-supply, so prices drop.

Solar producers are able to store some energy in batteries when the sun is blazing, but there’s a limit to how much they can store, and they also worry about over-producing, because of the strain on their hardware.

“Solar panels have a certain lifetime,” says Horowitz. “The more you use them, the quicker they degrade and generate less energy. So if we can’t pass the energy on to the grid, because it’s already got as much as it needs, we actually want to point the panels a little bit away from the sun.”

Other factors come into play. Automatically tilting panels through the day to track the sun may sound effective, but on an overcast day it may actually be better to point them straight up instead, where it’s brighter.

Storing the energy to sell later in the day may be more profitable. “Let’s say it’s 11 o’clock in the morning, you have a full battery,” says Horowitz. Now the clouds come in, and you’re generating less than your full capacity, then you need to make the decision, should I sell the energy from my battery to the grid?

“Initially, you would say yes, of course I want to sell. But the energy is going to be worth a lot more in the evening, so maybe I want to save that energy and sell in the evening.

“To make that decision intelligently, you need very accurate analysis and prediction of how much energy you’re going to be able to generate between now and the rest of the day.”

It gets even more complicated. Tilting one row of panels may leave another row in the shade, so how do you know whether the gains from one row will outweigh the losses from another?

SolarGik factors in all of this, and much more besides, into software that drives intelligent sales decisions – how to tilt the panels and when to sell the energy. That, they say, is what sets them apart from their many rivals.

“We are not by any means the leading solar tracker company in the world,” says Horowitz. “There are many, many bigger players. But what we’re doing is we’re bringing a lot more sophistication and control to that market, through the combination of our hardware and our software.”

SolarGik says its hardware – the steel frames that hold the panels and the motors that tilt them – are a third lighter than its competitors, and therefore suitable for use on rooftops and on greenhouses.

Many large companies have so far failed to install panels on their flat roofs because it would take too long to break even.

But the price of panels has dropped dramatically, by as much as 90 per cent, and solar power achieved “grid parity” since 2018 – meaning it costs the same or less to produce as non-renewable alternatives.

“In America the leading stores, even the Walmarts IKEAs and Targets only have 20 per cent to 30 per cent of their rooftops covered,” says Horowitz. “In many cases that’s because the break-even period is too long for them.

“We are one of the only, if not the only, company in the world doing solar trackers on rooftops. What you see on most rooftops are what are called fixed tilts, just a panel sitting there and not moving.”

Subscribe to NoCamels weekly newsletter and get our top stories