Palmetto, a clean energy marketplace and a provider of solar energy consumption analytics solutions for residential solar, raised $375 million to accelerate its residential solar solutions across the U.S.
The funding round was led by Social Capital, with participation from new and existing investors including, ArcTern Ventures, Gaingels, Lerer Hippeau, and MacKinnon, Bennett & Co.
Palmetto will use the funds to invest in growing its marketplace of independent contractors and the technology, people, and resources to maintain – and over time grow – its overall operating efficiencies to expand its addressable market.
Currently, the residential solar market primarily consists of asset-heavy, low-margin business models, making the transition to a clean energy system expensive for both homeowners and providers. While residential solar represents a more than $100 billion total addressable market, only 3% of the more than 70 million homes across the U.S. utilize solar energy.
The Palmetto Energy Marketplace helps homeowners estimate utility costs saved by switching to solar and work with a team of local solar experts to design and install a system that matches their needs.
Chris Kemper, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of Palmetto, said: “Palmetto is the first distributed energy company built from a software foundation, which enables us to scale unlike any other clean energy provider and make real progress towards our mission of mitigating climate change. I honestly believe that in the same way the cell phone fundamentally changed the telecom market, Palmetto has the opportunity to do the same to the centralized fossil fuel industry.”
Earlier this month, Above, a solar data, and analytics company, secured a £2.4 million (~$3.2 million) investment from the Clean Growth Fund, the UK venture capital fund that invests in early-stage clean energy technology companies.
