Berlin – He calls his job a mission. Mario Kohl, 37 years old, wants to make clean energy easily and cheaply accessible to everyone. This is what the boss and founder of the Berlin start-up Enpal took up four years ago. Solar systems do not have to be bought through the company, but can be rented. But that’s just the beginning for coal. “Our dream is to put a solar system on every roof, a battery storage device in every house and an electric car in front of every door,” he says.
Coal wants to make Enpal the largest energy producer in Europe, for which the energy transition missionary is now getting financial tailwind with a few celebrities. Because with the Softbank Vision Fund 2 of the Japanese IT group of the same name, the world’s largest technology investor is now participating in the young Friedrichshain company. The Japanese are investing 150 million euros and are sure of a decent return. “Rising electricity prices and growing demand mean that the use of renewable energies is quickly becoming mainstream,” says Softbank manager Yanni Pipilis. The company did not want to comment on what value Enpal was rated in the deal.
One million systems planned by 2030
Enpal’s business model is to install solar systems on the roofs of homes and then rent them out to homeowners for 20 years. During this time, Enpal takes care of the maintenance and operation of the system and promises rental costs that are below the previous electricity bill and remain constant even if electricity prices rise.
On average, such a system produces around 8,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. Enough for self-sufficiency. In addition, Enpal offers a battery box in which excess electricity can be stored. Likewise, your own overproduction can also be given into the power grid for a legally stipulated feed-in fee of seven cents per kilowatt hour. If the 20 years have expired, the system can be taken over for one euro.
In fact, the company has been quite successful with this business model so far. If Enpal had installed a total of 4,500 solar systems by the end of last year, this year alone there will be 8,000. In the next year, at least a doubling is expected: 20,000 systems are targeted. The market is huge. There are around 19 million private homes in Germany, with at least 100,000 more each year. Enpal boss coal wants to supply one million households with their own solar systems by 2030.
Mario Kohl is someone who has been involved in the Berlin start-up scene for years. When he was in his early twenties, he founded a start-up called Buyer Portal, which could be used to find tradespeople, from kitchen builders to heating installers, for house-related assignments. At the end of his twenties, he had sold his shares in ProSiebenSat.1 and thus secured the start-up capital for Enpal, for which he initially only had to slightly modify the buyer portal model.
In addition, the graduate of the Koblenz elite university WHU is considered to be excellently networked and demonstrably successful in dealing with potential donors. In doing so, he was not only able to use his membership of the WHU alumni to win over the founders of Zalando and Hellofresh or one of the Samwer brothers for investments. He was also able to convince Peter Rive, cousin of Elon Musk and co-founder of the solar system provider SolarCity, and Leonardo DiCaprio for an investment. Coal for Enpal had already collected more than 220 million euros before the Softbank deal.
On the other hand, Enpal is no longer a garage company either. The company employs around 1000 people. In addition, there are almost 400 craftsmen, some of whom Enpal trains themselves and runs its own training center near Berlin. At its core, however, the start-up from Boxhagener Strasse sees itself as a technology company that wants to create its own ecosystem for green electricity. “We started with solar panels, then storage systems were added, and now we have intelligent networking,” says environmental and energy economist Benjamin Merle, who is responsible for the operational business of Enpal.
In the software development department at Enpal 150 employees are employed to offer customers solutions that make green electricity production more and more lucrative for them. Soon Enpal wants to offer its customers the opportunity to trade the surplus electricity directly on the electricity exchange, where 15 instead of seven cents can currently be achieved. In addition, the electricity storage facilities are to be combined to form virtual power plants that can be used to compensate for grid fluctuations. Admittedly for a corresponding fee. “We are actually doing exactly what Tesla is trying to do in Germany,” says 34-year-old Merle. It is about the “intelligent digital energy supply”.
Enpal also wants to offer electric cars for rent
And like Tesla, Enpal also wants to drive the traffic turnaround. In April of next year at the latest, a separate charging station is to be offered, with which e-car owners can then refuel their vehicle with electricity from their own solar harvest. And Enpal even wants to tackle the conversion of the private vehicle fleet from gasoline or diesel to electric drive. “We are thinking about getting our customers to an electric car quickly,” says Benjamin Merle. This should also be done as a rental model. Cooperation with a car subscription provider would be possible, for example.
In addition, the rental model is to be expanded to include multi-family houses, for which, according to Merle, there are currently regulatory hurdles from the legislature. In Berlin, the company will initially be a partner in the implementation of the Solarcity master plan, according to which a quarter of the electricity generated in Berlin should come from solar panels on the roofs of the capital by 2050 at the latest.
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