Enecsys, a spinout company from the Department of Engineering and the leader in reliable, long-life solar micro inverter systems for residential and commercial applications, has secured a further £25 million ($41 million) in equity financing to invest in its growth plan. Climate Change Capital Private Equity leads the funding round and joins existing investors for the largest private equity raised by any European cleantech company, so far, in 2011.
Enecsys was founded in 2003 by the Department's Professor Gehan Amaratunga and his PhD students Asim Mumtaz and Lesley Chisenga and Jayanti Durai from the Cambridge Judge Business School. They won the Cambridge Business Plan Competition in 2003 (as Cambridge Solar Electronics). Early investment came from Cambridge Enterprise and grants from EEDA and Carbon Trust. Another of Gehan's students Cuauhtemoc Rodriguez contributed to developing its leading technology paradigm. Lesley and Asim continue to lead the company's technology development together with two other alumni from the Department Nabin Shrestha and Andrabadu Viraj.
Enecsys and its patented technology was originally developed here at the Department. The company develops, manufacturers, and markets world-leading, highly reliable, grid-connected solar micro inverters and monitoring systems for residential and commercial photovoltaic systems. The micro solar inverters convert the DC power produced by solar photovoltaic (PV) modules into high quality AC power for supply to the electricity grid. Enecsys micro inverters are installed on the rail behind solar modules, either one inverter per solar module or one for every two modules. The Enecsys micro inverter represents a breakthrough in inverter design for residential and commercial solar PV installations as its technology has, for the first time, eliminated components that limit inverter life. Additionally the Enecsys micro inverter enables solar PV systems to harvest between 5% and 20% more energy; it makes planning and installation of PV systems easier and safer due to the elimination of high voltage DC wiring, and it enhances system optimization by monitoring the performance of each solar module. Enecsys has recently launched its products in Europe and North America.
The advantages of Enecsys solar micro inverters in summary include:
- maximized energy harvest,
- improved safety,
- increased lifetime and reliability,
- enhanced performance monitoring,
- simplified PV array design and installation.
The monitoring system tracks, in real-time, the performance of each solar module and transmits the information through a robust built-in wireless communication system that connects to the Internet.
Simon Drury, a Partner at Climate Change Capital Private Equity, who will join the board of Enecsys commented: “The ability for Enecsys to provide high performance, cost effective micro inverters with the reliability and life expectancy to match that of solar modules fundamentally changes the economic model of solar PV and will play an important role in growing the market for this clean power source.”
Bart Markus of Wellington Partners, an existing Enecsys investor, added: “We are pleased with the progress that Enecsys has made since our initial investment in 2009, and the opportunity the market currently presents to Enecsys is huge; as of today Enecsys has the only certified micro inverter solution in production in the European market, which represents 75% of the world’s residential solar market.”
