Solar Water Heating Draws New Money

The solar water heater market may not be brand new, but it’s attracting a lot of new comers in recent years as more state and local incentives crop up. Sunnovations, which launched its first water heating system last year, announced Thursday that it has raised a series A round of funding to help it expand its market to Northeastern states and Colorado.

Sunnovations, founded in 2008, got the funding from Two Seven Ventures in Colorado but declined to disclose the amount. The startup’s CEO, Matt Carlson, told us that the amount is in the single-digit millions, and the company raised $250,000 in angel funding prior to that. The seed funding enabled the company to engineer a system that uses pressure and gravity to pump and circulate hot fluids to heat water, a patented design that comes with fewer parts and makes it cheaper to install and operate than other systems on the market, Carlson said.

Based in McLean, Virginia, Sunnovations engineers and contracts with American manufacturers to build its systems. It generates revenue by selling the systems to installers, and the latest funding round is key to expand its installer network. It has signed up installers in the mid-Atlantic states such as Maryland, North Carolina and its home state of Virginia. The company recent entered Massachusetts and is targeting New York and Connecticut next, Carlson said. It also has signed up a distributor in Colorado.

Installers who are selling Sunnovations’ systems include Southern Energy Management in North Carolina, SECCO in Pennsylvania and SunBug Solar in Massachusetts, Carlson said.

Although the solar water heater market has been around for decades, it hasn’t grown as quickly as it should, Carlson said. Companies that develop and install the more expensive solar electric systems, on the other hand, have done a better done of educating consumers, he added.

“This is a wildly under-discussed market. A lot of companies haven’t done a good job of telling the story of how (solar water heaters) can benefit you as a homeowner,” Carlson said. “A lot of websites are very technically oriented and haven’t made it easy for people to understand.”

 

 

Author: Zhejiang Haining Tiange Solar Energy Science Technology Co., Ltd.
website:www.sunnyrainsolar.com
main product: Solar energy,Solar water heater,Solar collectors，Compact solar water heater