Qualifying Photovoltaics

Qualifying PhotoVoltaics (QPV) was founded in 2016 by three PhD’s (Manuel Castillo, Rodrigo Moretón and Jorge Solórzano), acting as the daily leaders and a professor (Eduardo Lorenzo), acting as the principal advisor, all from the Instituto de Energía Solar, the second oldest research institute in solar energy in the world. Our mission is to increase and secure the profitability of PV assets by means of performance monitoring to reduce OPEX and increase the productivity and by means of testing campaigns to assure the quality of the PV plants. Our main differential factor is that we are team with vast experience in PV projects that have created digital tools that automatize all this knowledge of PV plant analysis.

Currently, the company is divided into three business lines that can work independently but reach its biggest potential when they work together as they help increase the sales of each other.

 The following lines describe each business line:

1. Helinox. A performance monitoring tool based on BigData and AI algorithms that analyze the monitoring data in order to detect underperformances and facilitate the O&M of the plants. As a difference from other competitors the service also includes data lake and SCADA capabilities, covering the whole monitoring chain. In addition, if underperfomances are detected and an on-site testing campaign is necessary, this service can be covered by our testing laboratory. Set to be the most important line of the company.
2. Accredited 17025 testing laboratory and consultancy for quality control. The initial business line of the company and which sparked and partially financed the development of the other three. Services can be required by independent customers or from those using Helinox. In addition, the testing campaigns can also serve to attract customers to a subscription to Helinox.
3. Testing and monitoring equipment. A proprietary line of products under the Entec Solar brand, for monitoring purposes (E-Dust soiling sensor and irradiance and temperature sensors) or for testing campaigns (E-1500 & E-1000).

During our testing and consulting services we have detected that there is a need for a profound analysis of PV plants in order to detect underperformances immediately and thus maximize the plants’ productivity. Actual monitoring tools only allow for a superficial and manual analysis of the plants’ performance and new tools with AI and BigData capabilities are a necessity, but very scarce in the market and have found that there is a big market opportunity for this service.

Our specific market is set to be worth $50B-$100B in 2026 as it rides the wave of the continuously growing PV market which is set to be worth $900B and growing at a CAGR of 16%. We have the vision that performance monitoring will automate and make more efficient the operation of PV plants and its testing campaigns digital market and that QPV is positioned to become an undisputed leader in this transition.

In 2022 we reached the milestone of having participated in more than 220 PV projects in all continents, adding over 12 GW of PV power and having worked with over 65 clients, some of them as big as Acciona, Naturgy, Repsol, ENEL, Dominion Energy and X-Elio. 2022 ended with over 20 employees and with close to a €1.4M total incomes, from direct project revenues (€0.9M) and public-private funding for product development (€500k).

Since the beginning of the company, we have raised a total of €2.2M from private and public funding mainly for product development and pilot tests, allowing us to have reached an early commercial stage and we are now ready to take the next step to make our products fully commercial and multiply our sales. In order to do so, we estimate an investment of €2.2M in the next two years to be spent in new personnel for product development and project execution, in creating a marketing and business development department, and in international expansion. We have secured 700k from public funding and are looking for 1.5M€ of equity financing at a pre-money company valuation of 13.5M€.

At the end of these two years QPV will break even and will be positioned as one of the key players in the market of PV plant performance monitoring and testing and have a product that is well established in the market and a brand that represents quality and high performance. We will continue to focus in expanding our market share and increasing our sales, reaching over 30M€ in sales in 2026, with a 50/50 ratio between MRR (Helinox subscription) and punctual incomes, 5.4M€ in EBITDA and having 71 full time employees.