Arcadia raises $50 million to bring AI to community solar

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Arcadia Power, a global utility data and community solar platform, announced the recent close of a $50 million round of funding. The company will use the new funding to support growth of its community solar program along with leveraging artificial intelligence to delve into its energy data.

“With this funding, Arcadia can continue to meet growing demand from our 300+ enterprise customers and 75+ community solar developer partners, all of whom are accelerating deployment and ad ding new solutions like battery storage, heat pumps and EV charging to their portfolios,” said Kiran Bhatraju, founder and CEO of Arcadia.

The company recently released the State of Community Solar, a report that highlights the anticipated growth in an industry designed to serve all. The report notes that challenges to the growth of community solar include high interest rates, increased local opposition to projects, interconnection delays, workforce issues, unfriendly regulatory environments and ongoing tariff issues between the United States and its trading partners, according to the report. It points out  important activity happening at the state level, including New Mexico, which adopted its first program, Maryland and New Jersey made pilot programs permanent.

The latest round of funding includes a fund managed by Macquarie Asset Management as a new equity investor, alongside existing investors Energy Impact Partners, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, BoxGroup, G2 Venture Partners, Camber Creek, Triangle Peak Partners, and Broadscale Group.

The company said it also raised a new $30 million credit facility with J.P. Morgan.

Arcadia was founded in 2014 and two years later launched what it said at the time was the first nationwide community solar program. It ran on Arcadia’s proprietary software platform that was integrated with over 100 utility billing systems nationwide. A customer could sign up for a share of any of Arcadia’s community solar installations across the country.

In 2018 the company raised $25 million to expand its community solar program, and at the same time announced that is had secured over 120 MW of solar power for its community solar programs. This funding followed a $6 million investment in 2017 that was led by G2VP, with participation from ValueAct Spring Fund, McKnight Foundation, Energy Impact Partners, Cendana Capital, Wonder Ventures, BoxGroup, and existing investors.

Arcadia reports that it manages the nation’s largest community solar portfolio with more than 2 GW of solar under management.

 

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