Companies and developers are often faced with a steep learning curve when installing clean energy technologies, such as solar facilities and EV chargers. To obtain a fair agreement, they must navigate in a complex tender process which involves requesting proposals, assessing the offers and, ultimately, to contract with a supplier.
Now, the A start -up station, founded by a pair of former MIT students and their colleagues, rationalizes the process of deploying clean energy. The company has developed a clean energy market that helps owners and real estate companies to analyze properties to calculate the yields of clean energy projects, create detailed projects, collect and compare the offers and select a supplier.
The platform helps owners and companies to adopt clean energy technologies such as solar panels, batteries and EV chargers at the lowest possible prices, in places with the highest potential to reduce costs and energy emissions.
“We do a lot to make the adoption of clean energy simple,” explains Manos Saratsis Smarchs '15, who co -founded station A with Kevin Berkemeyer MBA '14. “Imagine that if you try to buy a plane ticket and your travel agent used only one carrier. It would be more expensive, and you could not even go to certain places. Our customers want to have several options and easily discover the history of the person with whom they work.”
Station A has already teamed up with some of the country's largest real estate companies, some with thousands of properties, to reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings. The company also works with grocery channels, warehouses and other companies to accelerate the transition of clean energy.
“Our platform uses a lot of AI and automatic learning to transform addresses into construction fingerprints and to understand their electricity costs, their available incentives and where they can expect the highest king,” explains Saratsis, who serves as a product manager for station A. “This would normally require tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of consultation, and we can do it very quickly.”
Build the Foundation
As a graduate student of the MIT architecture department, Saratsis has studied environmental design modeling, using data from sources such as satellite imagery to understand how communities consume energy and to offer the most impactful potential potential solutions. He says lessons with teachers Christoph Reinhart And Kent Larson were particularly revealing.
“My ability to build a thermal energy model and simulate electricity consumption in a building has started to MIT,” said Saratsis.
Berkemeyer was president of the MIT Energy Club when he was at MIT Sloan School of Management. He was also a research assistant at MIT Energy Initiative as part of the Future of solar Report and assistant of a teacher for the course 15,366 (Climate and Energy Ventures). He says that courses in entrepreneurship with the professor of the Aulet practice bill and sustainability with the lecturer Jason Jay were formative. Before his studies at the MIT, Berkemeyer had a vast experience in solar and storage projects and by selling energy products specific to commercial customers. The possible co-founders did not believe the ways, but they ended up working together at the NRG Energy utility after obtaining the diploma.
“As co-founders, we have seen the opportunity to transform the way companies approach clean energy,” said Berkemeyer, who is now CEO of station A. “Station A was born from a shared conviction that data and transparency could unlock the full potential of clean energy technologies for everyone.”
At NRG, the founders have built software to help identify decarbonization opportunities for customers without having to send analysts to sites for audits in person.
“If they worked with a large grocery chain or a large retailer, we would use proprietary analyzes to assess this portfolio and find recommendations for things such as solar projects, energy efficiency and the response to demand that would produce positive yields in a year,” said Saraso.
The tools were a huge success within the company. In 2018, the pair, with the co-founders Jeremy Lucas and Sam Steyer, decided to transform technology in Station A.
The founders started by working with energy companies, but quickly moved their objective to property owners with huge wallets and large companies with long -term rental contracts. Many customers have hundreds, even thousands of addresses to assess. Using only addresses, station A can provide detailed financial return estimates for clean energy investments.
In 2020, the company has expanded its objective of the sale of access to its analyzes to the creation of a market for clean energy transactions, helping companies manage the competitive tender process for clean energy projects. Once a project is installed, station A can also assess whether it performs its expected performance and follows financial returns.
“When I speak to people outside the industry, they say to themselves:” Wait, does that already exist? “,” Said Saratsis. “It's a bit crazy, but the industry is always very emerging, and no one could find a way to execute the tender process transparently and on a large scale.”
From campus to the world
Today, around 2,500 clean energy developers are active on the platform of station A. A number of large real estate investment trusts also use its services, in addition to companies like HP, Nestlé and Goldman Sachs. If station A was a developer, Sarasis says that it would now rank in the top 10 in terms of annual solar deployments.
The founders create their time put to help them evolve.
“Many of these relationships are from the MIT network, whether by the people we met in Sloan or by engagement with MIT,” said Saratsis. “A large part of this company concerns reputation, and we have established a very good reputation.”
Since its foundation, Station A has also sponsored courses at Sustainability Lab of MIT, where Sarasis has conducted research as a student. As they work to cultivate the offers of station A, the founders say they use the skills they have acquired as a student every day.
“Everything we do around the analysis of construction is inspired in some respects by what I did when I was at the MIT,” explains Saratsis.
“The station has only started,” says Berkemeyer. “The adoption of clean energy does not only concern technology – it is a question of making the process transparent and accessible. This is what motivates us every day, and we are delighted to direct this transformation.”
