Solstice was founded to radically expand access to clean energy among residents in the United States. Eighty percent of Americans are restricted from the rooftop solar market due to individual rooftop eligibility, homeownership status, and access to financing.

Steph Speirs (right) and Sandhya Murali (left), Founders of Solstice

Solstice is providing an alternative by working with solar farms developers, financiers, community organizations, businesses, and households to make community solar a viable option for consumers. With community solar, solar arrays are installed in a centralized location where local residents can enroll. They enjoy the benefits of supporting local clean energy and saving money—all without any installation hassle or additional costs.

Solstice provides a turnkey software platform to acquire and manage customers for community solar projects.  Their platform makes it easy for customers to sign up and learn about how they can connect to farms, and it provides tools for consumers to become ambassadors for their community and solar project.

Solstice has already generated demand for 96MW of solar (14,000 customers) across 20 solar projects in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and D.C., and is looking to expand to farms in Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, and California. The Solstice team, alongside its Multiply Solar partners, was also awarded rights to deploy the New York City’s first shared solar projects on public housing buildings in Queens and Staten Island. In addition, Solstice invented the EnergyScore, which leverages data from customer payment records to predict future payment behavior, eliminating the industry standard of using FICO credit scores to qualify customers. The EnergyScore algorithm has proven to be more accurate in predicting utility bill payment behavior than FICO scores, and it is also more inclusive of low-to-moderate income Americas.

With its suite of products and services, Solstice’s focus is to make community solar so simple and so affordable that everyone signs up for it.

More about Solstice:

“Why Can’t Renters Get Solar Power?” – Sierra Club 3/6/18

“Throughout the due diligence process. . .[Sara and Kerry] kept themselves informed and educated about our company and the industry, and they came back to us with thoughtful questions. It has been a respectful two-way street, and that’s different. It makes me excited to work with them.” – Steph Speirs

Co-founder and CEO: Steph Speirs
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA

Meet Steph Speirs:

Background: Steph Speirs is an entrepreneur and community builder with management experience in the Middle East, South Asia, and the United States. Steph was raised by a single mother in Hawaii, which cemented her belief in social progress and guided her professional experiences as a community builder in multiple countries.  She co-founded and runs Solstice, an enterprise dedicated to radically expanding the number of American households that can take advantage of clean energy using community-shared solar farms. She previously worked in India and Pakistan with Acumen on solar product deployment and renewable energy investments. Prior to working in energy, Steph served in Obama organizations – first managing field operations in seven states for the first presidential campaign, and later developing Middle East policy as the youngest Director at the White House National Security Council. With more than 30 honors and awards, Steph has been selected as an Acumen Global Fellow, Grist 50 Fixer, Kia Revisionary, Global Good Fund Fellow, Cordes Fellow, Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and GLG Social Impact Fellow for her work. Steph and Solstice have been featured in a number of publications, including Forbes, Fast Company, Sierra Club Magazine, Huffington Post, and Marie Claire, among others. She holds a BA from Yale University, an MPA with distinction from Princeton University, and an MBA from MIT.

Steph Speirs, CEO of Solstice

Why start Solstice? “Raised in the U.S. with my two siblings by my single immigrant mother, I witnessed my mother struggling to pay the bills on a blue collar salary. Solar is now cheap enough – the cheapest it has been in 10 years – so it can help American families with their monthly bills, but approximately 80% American households are locked out of the market for it because they cannot install it on their own rooftops. When I worked in India on the solar micro grids in rural areas, I realized there were a lot of areas in America that could use something similar. There is a social justice argument for making energy like solar easy to access for everyone. Energy costs are a real pain point for this massive customer segment, and solar energy could help to solve that problem while breaking our reliance on fossil fuels. That’s a win for the people and the planet.”

Why seek venture capital? “We were not initially chasing venture capital; we started with angels. Venture capital was not friendly to clean tech in the past 10 years, but costs are different now. Solstice needs to find good partners to support the growth of the community solar industry, which is more than doubling each year.”

Have you seen women general partners (GPs) bring a different perspective to the table? Do you think a woman’s perspective is valuable to this market? “The energy industry does not have many women, however, 60% of our customer base is women. Only 2% of funding goes to women, and only 16% of the investors are women, but research shows that women leaders have better business performance and outcomes. It’s bad business to not have women – you need leadership that represents your customer base. You’re doing a disservice to those customers if you do not have more women leaders and investors.”

Why True Wealth Ventures? “I liked that they are women investors. Solstice just started with True Wealth Ventures, but throughout the due diligence process I saw that they were spending a lot of their own time on research and making sure their schedules worked for us. They kept themselves informed and educated about our company and the industry, and they came back to us with thoughtful questions. It has been a respectful two-way street, and that’s different. It makes me excited to work with them.”

Words of Wisdom: “Because there are so few CEOs and investors who are women, it can be difficult to find mentors. You have to deliberately build relationships and connections with women in your industry. Ask for advice even before you’re ready to reach out for funding. They may eventually become advisors and/or investors down the line.”