EP #122 - Laurent Coulot: The Sunny Future Ahead

Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps:

1:46 - Developing the next generation of solar modules

7:29 - Does winning awards help a startup?

8:56 - Fierce competition from China

12:03 - The non-liberalized energy market in Switzerland

14:32 - What will 2021 bring?

About Laurent Coulot and Insolight:

Laurent Coulot is the co-founder and CEO of Insolight, a photovoltaic startup. Laurent started Insolight in 2015, together with his two co-founders, Mathieu Ackermann and Florian Gerlich. Within 5 years, the company has grown to over 15 employees. With Insolight, the co-founders focus on a very specific area of the photovoltaic market which is not yet well served by mass produced photovoltaic panels - agrivoltaics. Insolight’s solar panels are both translucent and highly efficient. These properties make the panels uniquely suited to be deployed on top of areas which are used for growing crops - therefore reducing the land use competition between agriculture and photovoltaic by allowing them to coexist in the same space. In 2020, Insolight closed a $ 5m series A and received its first orders from industrial customers. The company was also awarded the public choice award at the Swiss Energy Startup Days. In 2021, Insolight plans to build and ship more than 1000 panels.

Before starting Insolight, Laurent worked as an Applications Engineer at Melexis. He holds a Masters in Micro and Nanosystems from the EPFL.

Memorable Quotes:

"We think market regulations should reflect the fact that solar energy has a pretty much non-existent carbon footprint."

If you would like to listen to more episodes on solar power, check out our conversations with André Borschberg, Anaïs Matthey-Junod, Sébastien Jaffaux and Liliane Ableitner.

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