AC grant awarded to accelerate UPowr’s solar and battery platform for scale

Tuesday 16 February 2021

Sydney clean-tech company UPowr has welcomed new funding that will accelerate the development of a game-changing digital residential solar and battery installation platform.

The grant was awarded through the Australian Government’s Entrepreneurs' Programme - Accelerating Commercialisation, administered by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

Launched in 2018, UPowr offers Australia’s only end-to-end service for households looking to install solar and batteries. UPowr’s platform generates personalised quotes for homeowners, providing industry-leading insights on considerations such as shading impacts and panel positioning to help customers save time, money and purchase solar and batteries systems with confidence.

The platform manages the entire installation, providing ongoing support and system performance insights for households, simultaneously tackling many of the challenges facing Australia’s solar industry.

Using data-driven algorithms to remove the ‘guesstimate’ quoting style prevalent throughout the industry, the platform simplifies the focus for installers by managing the installation process, customer engagement and provides customer and field support to overcome any on-site issues that arise.

The Accelerating Commercialisation funding will be used to add key capabilities to UPowr’s automated solar design tool and portals to manage high volumes of quality assured installations and solar systems monitoring.

Just 503 of the coveted grants have been awarded between the program’s 2014 launch and November 2020, providing $240 million to support 451 companies to commercialise their products and enter new markets.

CEO and Co-founder Stu Philpot said the funding is an endorsement of UPowr’s model that prioritises transparency, trust and value for customers.

“We are excited to receive funding through this program. We set out to create an end-to-end service that puts customers first and this funding will help to take us to the next level,” Stu said.

“Australia is a world-leader in rooftop solar and this funding will help us to change the way it is delivered to offer a better experience for customers,” he said.

UPowr CIO and Co-founder Daniel Friedman said that the funding allows UPowr to focus on scaling up their technology to support the deployment of more residential clean energy assets into Australia.

Daniel, who will be leading the delivery of the development relating to the grant funding, shared that the work will be pivotal in expanding the platform to be a true multi-sided platform where different participants can access and contribute to value creation.

“To date, our focus has been completely on the customer-facing portal, along with the automation that ensures an installation is completed without avoidable error.”

“This funding will allow us to build out the portals that will be used by our network of accredited installers, as well as business partners who want to provide their customer or member bases with simple, clear and easily managed access to installing solar – a good example of this might be large corporates who want to offer employees access to solar.”

More information about UPowr is available at upowr.co.

Environmental game changers lead the way amongst Entrepreneurs’ Programme grant recipients. Source: BusinessGovAu