How does subscription solar work? This Spanish company instals panels with no upfront investment

Want a ‘money printing machine’ on your roof? Leonardo DiCaprio is backing this European solar company.

“I'm building something with purpose and I even get goosebumps when I share it with you,” says solar entrepreneur Wouter Draijer.

Born in New York and raised in Amsterdam, the 29-year-old is CEO and co-founder of SolarMente - a company aiming to change the way people consume and distribute energy in Spain.

Its subscription service allows homeowners and businesses to install solar panels with no upfront cost - a model that has attracted investment from Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and US technology startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Euronews Green spoke to Wouter about his company’s mission to install “climate saving money printing machines” on roofs across Spain.

Spain’s solar revolution

Flying into Barcelona five years ago, Wouter was struck by one thing: the near absence of solar panels on the city's roofs.

He soon discovered that Spain’s controversial ‘sun tax’ was to blame. From 2015 to 2018, it tightly regulated the self-consumption of energy in Spain and deterred homeowners from installing solar.

Homes fitted with solar panels paid a 7 per cent tax to remain connected to the national electricity grid. Panels also needed to be registered and homeowners had to report on their energy production and consumption.

Public opposition and legal challenges to the tax stressed the importance of solar in the green transition and reaching energy independence, and it was eventually abolished.

This was the start of Spain’s solar revolution, and SolarMente was at the forefront.

“We were the first registered solar company here in Spain,” says Wouter.

“Four years ago, there was a market penetration of 0.01 per cent - like no household had solar… There are 7 million empty roofs as we speak. And we're addressing all of it.”

‘I felt something is going really wrong here’

Armed with a degree in technical engineering and renewable energies from the Netherlands, Wouter was well equipped to recognise and address Spain’s solar shortage.

“I come from a country where one out of three households have solar, and there's no sun in the Netherlands - in Amsterdam, it’s always raining,” he tells Euronews Green.

“I entered Spain, a country where there’s a lot of sun and there's just no solar energy installation. I felt something is going really wrong here.”

His mission was clear: “To accelerate the energy transition by making it very easy for every Spanish house owner to go for solar.”