Sunday Power is turning rooftops green with Hologram cellular IoT
—Endre Ulberg, Software engineer, Sunday Power
“I have a greater deal of trust with Hologram than I had with our previous provider.”
Endre Ulberg
Software engineer, Sunday Power
Sunday Power builds, owns and operates solar systems on commercial roof tops via their innovative Solar as a Service model. By renting out the roof instead of owning the system itself, building owners can produce solar energy without investment costs while also increasing the value of their building. Read how Hologram's cellular connectivity provides crucial data for Sunday Power's operations, helping accelerate Norway’s transition to green energy.
Sunday Power emerged from the desire to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and build new pathways to that goal. They knew that one untapped location for solar installations was the rooftops of large commercial and industrial building rooftops. Most building owners simply didn’t have the time, money, or expertise to make this transition to renewable energy.
This underutilized space was ideal for a new model, offering building owners a comprehensive, no-investment solution that eliminates solar energy adoption barriers. Via their Solar as a Service offering, Sunday Power installs a complete solar system free of charge and is responsible for operation and maintenance. Building tenants receive solar power at market price or below and the building owner receives rental income from the roof with a revenue share model from the electricity production. Plus, the building owners benefit from the longer term value creation of a greener building.
In less than three years, Sunday Power is now Norway’s largest Solar as a Service developer with more than 100 large scale rooftop solar installations and rapidly growing.
Data drives the Sunday Power business model. The company leverages real-time, reliable data streams from its extensive network of solar installations for:
Initially, the company utilized a variety of components from multiple vendors, including solar panels, inverters, and metering equipment, to provide their services. However, a connectivity outage to their inverters resulted in the loss of crucial power generation information and subsequently, revenue. This connectivity instability, coupled with inadequate APIs and an unsustainable business model from their previous provider, prompted Sunday Power to overhaul their IoT strategy.
Operationally, their goal was to guarantee consistent data access. Strategically, they sought enhanced control to develop services that would provide value and differentiation to both their internal teams and end-users.
"With Hologram, we get the ability to scale on top of systems that we trust and we get to do it in a cost-effective way."
– Endre Ulberg, software engineer, Sunday Power
Given the importance of their connectivity solution, Sunday Power decided to take their requirements to the marketplace and ran a competitive RFP. More than 12 companies vied for the opportunity and Hologram was selected as the superior offering. “From the first time we spoke to Hologram, it was quite obvious that they are more technically savvy and also a better business partner,” noted Endre Ulberg, a software engineer at Sunday Power.
With their rapid growth, Sunday Power needs to be able to scale both their technical platform and their business model. Hologram’s flexible pricing models enable them to forecast their costs and better manage their budgets. “Other cellular IoT providers have a pay up front model, which really isn’t a cost effective solution for high volume, low data usage fleets like ours,” added Endre. “Hologram’s pay-as-you-go pricing model enables us to create accurate forecasts, which saves us considerable time and costs. I'm completely certain that moving to Hologram is going to pay itself over many times.”
In addition to their business model innovation, Sunday Power is developing technology and software to more effectively and efficiently manage their solar installations. One effort is to move to a single piece of hardware at the edge for the industrial solar equipment, like batteries, inverters, controllers, and metering equipment.
“The technical trust that I have in Hologram allows us to actually build on top of their platform,” said Endre. “We get more tools to solve different types of technical issues in more creative and better ways.” Now with one smaller, less expensive device, Sunday Power will be able to standardize on Hologram to simplify their operations. That trust extends beyond the Hologram technology to all of the teams Sunday Power interacted with.
“I have a greater deal of trust with Hologram than I have with our previous provider. When we ask specific technical questions, we simply get better answers from the Hologram team which saves us time and money.”
– Endre Ulberg, software engineer, Sunday Power
Sunday Power leverages the cellular IoT-provided data across their installations. Sunday Power employs sophisticated data analytics to maintain constant vigilance over each solar installation. This real-time monitoring ensures optimal system performance and maximizes energy output.
On the operational side, real-time connectivity data enables them to track system performance indicators such as energy generation, panel efficiency, and operational status. Immediate alerts are triggered for any anomalies or potential malfunctions, enabling proactive maintenance and minimizing downtime. "Having to rely on the Internet at the building introduces time and risk into our operational model," noted Endre. “With Hologram’s cellular IoT platform, we can directly control the connectivity for our mission-critical data.”
With all of the details of their fleet in the Hologram Dashboard, Sunday Power can quickly manage the connectivity and troubleshoot any issues. “We simply didn’t have the ability to quickly search for a device by number and have the system understand the reference. The Hologram Dashboard has powerful search features that lower both our time to issue identification and our stress.” The team also leverages the SMS features to send messages to unresponsive devices.
Additionally, data serves as the foundation for Sunday Power's customer-facing dashboards that provide real-time visibility into each customer’s solar energy production, consumption patterns, and environmental impact reduction. “Before Hologram, we had significant downtime in our provider’s API service,” noted Endre. “Now, with Hologram’s trustworthy and high performance API, we can reliably use the data from the edge to deliver best-in-class insight into solar plant operations in the Nordics.”
There’s simply nothing better than helping customers improve their operations and grow their business. With reliable connectivity services, pay-as-you-go cost model, and exceptional support teams, Hologram stood out in a crowded competition. “As we like to say in Sunday Power, partnering with Hologram was a no-brainer,” Endre summarized. “With most other types of supplier relations we have, there are things to be worried about. With Hologram, I don't have anything to be worried about, which is very nice.”
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