Today, of all the commercial real estate that could have onsite solar, less than 5% does. That means we are missing out on 95% of the solar energy generation possible—at a time when we need to be pursuing all possible avenues to offset rising electricity costs and mounting environmental impact of fossil fuel dependence. Instead of leaving these resources untapped, we need to pursue a future in which many more commercial buildings have onsite generation, storage, and EV charging which is better for the bottom line, our electric grid, and our planet. This is why we are pleased to announce our latest investment in Station A, which helps real estate owners and long-term tenants rapidly identify and install solar, battery, and EV charging projects.
The Station A Team with Co-founder and CEO Kevin Berkemeyer, far left.
In the last decade, the costs of commercial electricity have steadily risen at the same time as more and more of our world has electrified. The Department of Energy reports that load growth on the grid has tripled over the last decade and with the surge of AI and energy-intensive data centers, it is predicted to double or triple again by 2028. This puts a strain on commercial real estate owners and occupants who have to pay for that increasing cost. Given the rising cost in securing electricity from the grid and the steadily declining cost of solar, for many large buildings onsite solar generation has become the most cost effective way to procure electricity. This is good news for renewable energy developers, but can be a challenging landscape to navigate for corporate real estate owners who want to make sure they are finding the best partners and prices for solar, storage, and EV charging infrastructure.
The challenge for these owners lies in navigating the “bid spread.” The bid spread is the difference in bid prices that an owner receives from multiple renewable energy developers. In Station A’s analysis, the team has found the average bid spread to be over $1 million when comparing five or more bids on a project. Station A, by contrast, levelizes all responses to a building owner’s RFP so they can compare bids and choose the right project partner at the right price. And for developers, Station A is a way to maintain a long-term relationship with owners so they can do additional work with them across their portfolio as project-level dynamics change over time.
The Station A platform allows commercial real estate owners to look across their portfolio of buildings and view the viability of projects, launch them on the marketplace, and then transact by selecting the right partners to deliver on those projects. Station A has enabled these transactions with some of the largest commercial real estate players in the country, including CBRE, Walmart, Prologis, Goldman Sachs, Nestle, Wayfair, and many others. The AI-powered platform analyzes and grades buildings to identify the best candidates for clean energy. The provider network on Station A’s marketplace then provides indicative pricing or fixed and firm proposals through a streamlined process. Station A levelizes these bids, presents them to owners, and in an average time of one month moves projects from a listing to a transaction, making the process easy, transparent, and profitable for all parties.
Our belief is that to achieve the energy transition over the next decade we must decarbonize, localize, electrify, and optimize energy use within our built environment. Station A’s mission aligns with Building Ventures’ thesis on enabling a sustainable built world by making the transition to cleaner and cheaper energy easier for the $20 trillion+ commercial real estate market.
Our team was introduced to Station A through our network of founders who are innovating within the field of climate tech. The team at Station A had the credibility and traction to impress each reference we spoke to and our time with the leadership team gave us the conviction to invest in Station A after looking in detail at the field. The team of co-founders met while working together at NRG incubating what would become Station A before they spun out it to service the broader industry. Through this experience they gained an earned secret on the “job to be done” and of the bottlenecks that typically prevent economically viable clean energy projects within commercial and industrial real estate.
Over the course of getting to know the Station A team, our investment team travelled to their offices in San Francisco to meet their co-founder and CEO Kevin Berkemeyer, met with their head of product in our Boston office, and spoke with several of their customers, including RMR and Prologis. We were consistently impressed with the team’s commitment to its mission, the value the platform is already providing major customers, and of course the future potential for our built world. During the course of our due diligence, we also watched them pitch and win an enterprise-level agreement with Walmart rolling out over 30 locations nationwide.
We decided to invest because we believe that this team has the industry understanding, product capabilities, pipeline, and vision to become the leading marketplace for clean energy projects in the built environment. And we couldn’t be happier to partner with Kevin and the Station A team as they scale their operations with this oversubscribed Series A round.
“BV’s deep expertise in supporting founders who are digitizing and decarbonizing the built environment, combined with a commitment to impactful, data-driven solutions, makes them the ideal partner as we scale Station A’s market-making platform.”
– Kevin Berkemeyer, Co-Founder & CEO at Station A
We are thrilled to co-lead Station A’s oversubscribed $8 million Series A joined by Climactic and Systemiq Capital and their existing Seed investors. We look forward to working with the Station A team as they use these funds to scale their team and service the 95% of commercial real estate owners who could benefit from cleaner and cheaper onsite electricity. Station A provides the roadmap for those looking to walk down the path towards a better bottom line and #forabetterbuiltworld.
You can learn more about Station A on their website, through their press release on their oversubscribed Series A, or by watching a platform overview here.
