Is All-Electric the Future of Homes?
September 26, 2022
Mountain View, Calif.-based Lunar Energy emerged from stealth and announced its mission to electrify the home and provide energy independence to homeowners worldwide. Led by former Tesla Energy executive, Kunal Girotra, Lunar was founded in August 2020 and has raised $300 million in funding over two rounds by Sunrun, the nation’s leading residential solar and battery storage provider, and South Korea’s SK Group. In 2021, Lunar acquired Moixa, a leading global software company for distributed energy resources management (ITOCHU and Honda are investors).
“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% clean energy and remove the usage of fossil fuels from every home,” said Kunal Girotra, founder & CEO of Lunar Energy. “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.”
Lunar has built a team of nearly 250 employees globally, most of whom are a mix of hardware, firmware and software engineers designing and building energy products in its California and London, U.K. offices.
“As an entrepreneur, I’m always looking for those rare opportunities where you can invest in exceptional people with a big vision,” said Lynn Jurich, Chair of Lunar Energy and co-founder, co-executive chair of Sunrun. “Kunal, and the engineering team at Lunar Energy, are building at scale home electrification products that will dramatically accelerate the switch from fossil fuels to renewables. I’m excited to see Sunrun, and the industry at large, begin offering Lunar Energy solutions to millions of homes across the nation.”
Adds Ian Huh, Executive Vice President, SK E&S, “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 U.S. and the world use renewable power for both their own needs, and also serve the needs of the broader power grid.”
In acquiring U.K.-based software leader Moixa, Lunar will combine revolutionary new hardware with the proven GridShare™ software that manages the thousands of batteries across Europe and Japan. Currently, GridShare software – now Lunar Gridshare™ – is deployed at scale across 35,000 homes (330MWh of batteries) via ITOCHU in Japan, supports advanced smart charging services for Honda electric vehicles, and facilitated UPS’ transition to electric vehicle fleets in the U.K.
“From our early patents in smart homes to managing the world’s largest single fleet of home batteries, our Gridshare software has led the industry for more than 10 years and significantly advanced smart home charging,” stated Simon Daniel, CEO & co-founder of Moixa. “In joining Lunar Energy, we have the exciting opportunity to pursue even greater scale for Gridshare by aggregating larger fleets of batteries across the world to better manage clean energy intelligently for homeowners and businesses.”
Lunar turns homeowners into active members of the energy economy by giving them the freedom to generate, store and control their own clean energy and share it with their communities.
