Three young Colombians invented a system with which the panels follow the path of the sun, improving efficiency from 16% to 40%. Eduardo Ospina, CEO of the Solenium company, tells us how they did it.
What is Solenium?
In a dream that started five years ago. Solar energy projects were hardly seen in the country and we dreamed of developing technology that could make it more affordable for individuals and businesses. In that sense, we found and began to investigate what could improve solar energy conditions and founded this company, which is dedicated to developing technology with the aim of improving access to solar energy for people and companies.
How much is Colombia betting on renewable energy?
Colombia, in the 80s, installed its first solar energy system, and from that moment until 2014 there was almost no progress, only by some private companies that advanced their projects in remote rural areas to meet basic energy needs, and in 2014 there was a threat of rationing and the Government passed Law 1715, the first to promote non-conventional renewable energies; that is to say, solar, wind, biomass … We took out the hydroelectric plant because it is conventional renewable, and with it there were income benefits, VAT, tariffs, accelerated depreciation, and in that year we were born seeing that opportunity. Many other companies were also born and that made solar panels begin to enter the country more frequently and prices for a solar energy project began to stabilize. And from 2014 to 2018 new business models were developed. For 2018, the icing on the cake in regulation regarding clean energy came and CREG 030 of 2018 came out, which is the regulation that allowed a person or a company from any part of the country to sell surplus energy. That made a person not only a consumer of energy, but could sell, but save 100% and even have negatives, that means that the network operators could pay them. Today it is complex to know at what rates we are growing, but I would say that the sector is growing at rates greater than 10 Xs at a general level. The projects are exploding, the country’s installed capacity was 10 megabytes two years ago, today it is more than 100 megabytes. And in two years it will be more than 1,000 megabytes. Accelerated growth.
You obtained a patent before the SIC. What is it about?
We saw that there was a very great opportunity; However, we knew that it is a new market not only in Colombia but also worldwide. There were problems to be solved and we came from a very technical background. So we wanted to know what affected the performance of solar plants the most. We found that the movement of the sun generates inefficiencies, because the panels are fixed in a fixed way; So we developed a product for the panels to automatically follow the path of the sun. It was a problem that the academy ignored, because it was said that we were so close to Ecuador that it was not so interesting. We investigated and saw that we could improve the performance of a solar plant, on average for a whole year, by 16%, and on the best days by up to 40%, which is crazy.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsWhen we talk about big projects it is a lot of money, and that affects something very important: improving the competitiveness of the cost of solar energy. But how does it work?
I liked drones a lot, because I had experience with stabilization systems for helicopters and airplanes, and I brought that experience to a solar energy system, I took the same sensors and implemented them in a solar structure where we mediated the range and implemented a astronomical algorithm that allowed us to understand with 0.1 degree precision where the sun was at all times. It was very homemade, a solar monitoring system, but we also saw opportunities in the matter of cleaning: Colombia is a tropical country with rains almost all year round and that allowed us to develop other algorithms that would allow us to attack the problem of cleaning solar plants. A 100 megawatt solar plant, which is the largest being built in Colombia, spends $ 900 million a year on cleaning maintenance and we develop algorithms that also have the automatic cleaning system for solar panels. We filed papers in 2017 when we did not even know that we had invented something, we did it “pure rubber”, but through a support that Ruta N gave us, who gave us some tutors who determined that we had a possible patent because it was high innovative and inventive level, and when we entered to file the patent with the SIC, it was effectively accepted.
How did they get to Ruta N?
It is very interesting. We were dreamers who wanted to do beautiful things, but we had no idea about business, we were not purely entrepreneurs. First we knocked on the doors of Capital Semilla, they welcomed us, we only had the idea and the prototype, and there they told us that we should go to Ruta N, the largest technological innovation and development center in the country. When we got closer, we saw that there was a call called the Patent Fund, where those innovations that were being made in the country were evaluated to give them support. They looked if with what we had done we could generate value, we passed and they financed us
filing part of the patent. Thus a world of possibilities was opened where we have had a lot of support in the middle of our process.
How much is the ordinary citizen investing in renewable energy in Colombia?
In 2015 we presented a proposal for solar energy and we can say that today the acceptance is obviously higher. There is already education and culture around solar energy, both in homes and in companies. We are talking about an annual growth of 25% in this interest in implementing sustainability projects. Not only is it an interest that is based on climate change, but this type of project also generates interesting returns.
What have you, who are dreamers, achieved as a company?
All this is very nice because we dreamed of many things: democratize and massify clean energy, that anyone could have solar energy. In addition to the patent and the product that improves the profitability of solar plants, especially those that go on the ground, we have developed other products, we have gotten into the wave of industry 4.0, especially to improve access to the clean energy. Today we have smart energy measurement systems, with which we can inform any of our clients at all times how their solar energy project is progressing, how energy consumption is and there we enter into a topic of what is cheaper: generate energy or avoid consuming energy. So we have been trying to attack the two problems: generating clean energy, but also making people and companies aware of consuming better energy, which must reduce their costs and energy consumption in the inefficiencies that may arise. So we developed an intelligent energy measurement system, which is like a robot that is placed in a company or in a home and allows you, with artificial intelligence, to be aware of any electrical anomaly and better understand its generation to generate value for your project. Then we optimize the maintenance of those projects using that same artificial intelligence and applying mathematics to be able to predict with some anticipation when a plant maintenance should be done and we optimize the useful life in the long term.
It obtained the 2018 ISA Ventures Award, recognized in the “top” 10 of small companies of ANDI and in the process of being certified as a B company to provide solutions to environmental and social problems. Who is behind Solenium?
I am an electrical engineer and I did a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. I come from a very technical background. I was a young researcher at the National University and in those research groups I had the fortune to meet my partners: one of them is a control engineer. He is a mathematician and the one who puts more mathematics into all this, leads the hardware development team with a focus on electronics, software development, firmware, which is like the software that is housed inside that electronics and the combination of everything. this is what generates innovation. We already have a whole innovation team and we can make a new product in a matter of two weeks, because we already have a development base and a tremendous team that puts all the affection and love into this market so that things go quickly and well. And there is my partner, who is an administrative engineer. She has supported us with the issue of new financial products, understanding the needs of the market regarding financing, because it seems to us that one of the needs that the sector has the most is financial. We already have monetization models where we can not charge a company for its project, but sell the energy and we assume that financial expense, so all this combination of capabilities, just to speak of the founding team, has allowed us to develop a large number of products. that they attend to that dream of democratizing and massifying the clean emergency. We are already a team of twenty people who are constantly thinking about the problems on the street to come and solve them.