Glint Solar names Otovo co-founder as CEO, targets US expansion and data center push

Glint Solar is targeting expansion in the US market and seeking new opportunities in the data center segment – and the Norwegian solar and battery storage software company has appointed a new CEO to support its ambitions.

Simen Fure Jørgensen brings AI sector and startup scaling experience to Glint Solar. Jørgensen was the co-founder of Otovo, a European residential solar platform that uses Ai monitoring for system optimization.

“It was my idea to get him in,” said Harald Olderheim, co-founder of Glint Solar and now former CEO. “I’ve seen what he’s done with Otovo and he scaled the team to 400 people and took it on the stock exchange. He took a Norwegian solar software tech company to a lot of countries so I asked him to join.”

Olderheim told pv magazine he will still be active in the business, leading the company’s US expansion. Olderheim argued that to succeed in the US market “you really need a good founder presence.”

The sales pitch to the US solar industry will likely focus on protecting investment for renewables and data center developers by using software tools to develop the most viable sites. “It’s really about de-risking the development pipeline,” Jørgensen explained, highlighting Spain as an example of a market where a high volume of solar projects were cut from the grid connection queue after they were deemed not viable.

“I don’t know how many millions of euros went out the door there, but that had to be a lot of lost cash,” Jørgensen said.

As it pursues US expansion, the core business for Glint Solar remains unchanged – offering software tools for identifying and designing utility-scale solar and battery storage projects – but with plans to increasingly incorporate features for data center developers.

“This is an enormous market,” said Jørgensen. “Hundreds of billions of dollars are being poured into this, and speed to power is crucial for data centers.”

AI tools such as a project visualization feature have also been integrated on Glint Solar’s platform, and Jørgensen teased a new customer facing AI assistant for developers that is currently in beta testing.

“You can ask the agent to basically go over millions of potential sites and ask to get a ranked list of the top 100 sites in one US state, for example,” he said.

Other recent additions to the range include a battery storage noise calculator which models the impact on the area surrounding a proposed BESS installation. Noise pollution is a common objection to BESS proposals and modeling this kind of impact can help streamline applications for planning consent, according to Glint Solar. It’s the type of feature the company hopes it can sell to the data center industry.

“Early engagement from the community helps a lot, when [developers] are talking to them they can show that this will not be a problem,” Olderheim explained. “You can easily put up a noise wall in the software – it takes two seconds – and then you can see how that affects the noise, and this helps to have the community with you.”

Jørgensen also highlighted how renewables developers in many markets are facing shifting regulations, which he sees as an opportunity for Glint Solar as investors are forced to quickly adapt designs to meet new requirements. The new CEO highlighted ongoing reform in the German market as an example.

“In Germany, we have these flexible connection agreements. But the German authorities change their minds on how this should work. We can change the setup for your project within a couple of clicks. For the siting, for the connection agreements and so on.”

European solar and storage professionals will also be able to get hands-on experience of Glint Solar product development at Intersolar Europe at The smarter E exhibition in Munich from June 23.

Olderheim said Glint Solar will have engineers at the exhibition who are tasked with creating functional design software on the spot through what they call “Glint Labs”.

“At Intersolar they can join us, say what they want, and then 20 minutes or half an hour later they can see the [software] feature they requested. They get a waffle and a coffee and then they can see what we build,” he said.