Global clean energy player Lunar Energy emerged from the shadows with the announcement of $300 million in funding over two rounds from Sunrun, the United States’ leading residential solar and battery storage provider, and South Korea’s SK Group.
“The SK Group is committed to the worldwide energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, and our investment in Lunar Energy is part of that ongoing commitment. We believe that Lunar has the potential to revolutionize how homes across the US and the world use renewable power for both their own needs and also serve the needs of the broader power grid,” said Ian Huh, Executive Vice President, SK E&S.
The startup, led by a former Tesla Energy executive, also acquired Moixa, the leading global software company for distributed energy resources (DER) management, to fulfill its mission of electrifying the home and providing energy independence to homeowners around the world. ITOCHU and Honda, previous investors in Moixa, have joined Lunar’s board of directors.
Kunal Girotra founded Lunar Energy in August 2020 to transition homes worldwide to 100 percent clean energy. The startup is developing the world’s best clean energy products to electrify all homes and connect communities to form clean, resilient virtual power plants.
The company is delivering an all-electric ecosystem to make electricity greener, air cleaner, and energy safe, secure, and reliable for all.
“More than ever, we need rapid adoption of renewable energy solutions across all sectors to mitigate climate change. Lunar Energy was founded to build affordable hardware and software products for the residential sector to help homeowners generate, store and consume 100 percent clean energy and remove the usage of fossil fuels from every home,” said Kunal Girotra, Founder and CEO of Lunar Energy.
The startup is striving hard to put its first product on the market by this year-end
The fund will be used by Lunar Energy to build a global team of nearly 250 employees, the majority of whom are a mix of hardware, firmware, and software engineers designing and building energy products in its Mountain View, California and London, UK, offices. A portion of the fund was used to acquire the smart battery company Moixa.
Lunar will use and scale Moixa’s proven GridShareTM software to manage the world’s batteries in Europe, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere. GridShareTM software from Lunar will provide a broader range of solutions to electrify homes and connect communities, resulting in the future’s green, reliable, and distributed energy system.
“The first offering of our product ecosystem is a next-generation home battery system. It’s the first step towards our mission to electrify all homes and connect communities to form clean, resilient virtual power plants—freeing us from power outages, rising energy costs and harmful emissions,” Kunal Girotra.
GridShare software—now Lunar GridshareTM—is currently deployed at scale across 35,000 homes (330MWh of batteries) in Japan via ITOCHU, supports advanced smart charging services for Honda electric vehicles, and aided UPS’s transition to electric vehicle fleets in the United Kingdom.
“From our first smart home patents to managing the world’s largest single fleet of home batteries, our Gridshare software has led the industry for more than a decade and significantly advanced smart home charging,” said Simon Daniel, CEO and co-founder of Moixa.
