SolarEdge Technologies, one of the leaders in distributed electronics for solar installations, just closed a $37 million round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) along with Opus Capital, Walden International, Genesis Partners, Vertex Venture Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and GE.
Rumors are that the firm is actively talking to banks to register for an IPO. SolarEdge's response is, “Naturally we hope to offer our stock to the public and feel we could do that once the company is ready and market conditions are right."
SolarEdge builds DC panel-level optimizers for residential and commercial applications, and although considered a niche by some, the distributed electronics market is turning into a pretty good niche.
SolarEdge, with tens of megawatts shipped in 2010, expects its business to triple in 2011 to reach about 170 megawatts.
I recently spoke with Guy Sella and Lior Handlesman, founders and leaders at SolarEdge, and they informed me that SolarCity was starting to deploy their distributed MPPT technology after a long bout of testing.
Jonathan Bass of SolarCity confirmed this, saying, "Yes, we do a custom design for each project and we do use SolarEdge in some situations when we think it can deliver solid ROI for the customer, most often if we encounter scattered or sweeping shade or when there are multiple roof planes for a relatively small installation."
So, panel-level electronics are out of the closet and on the rooftop installations of one of the biggest installers in the country.
SolarEdge now has a war chest to keep its growth going. Competition for the firm includes Tigo in optimizers, Enphase in microinverters, and every residential-size central microinverter.