The problem with solar power in Latin America isn't the sun. It's the money. For a mid-sized factory or a commercial farm, the upfront capital for a rooftop array can be a non-starter, leaving them stuck with the utility's grid and its fossil-fuel mix. Unergy, a startup in Medellín, decided the most useful thing it could sell wasn't the panels themselves, but the financial bridge to get them built.
Founded in 2020 by a trio who had already bootstrapped a solar installer, Unergy operates a marketplace. On one side are organizations that want clean energy but can't afford the capex. On the other are investors, from individuals to institutions, looking for stable returns from infrastructure. Unergy sits in the middle, developing, financing, and managing what it calls solar "mini-farms",projects typically under 1 MW, often built near the communities or businesses that will use the power [Cisco Blogs] [colombiaone.com, Nov 2025]. The company fractionalizes ownership of these projects into digital tokens called "uWatts," allowing investors to buy into a pool of solar assets [Dealroom].
The Wedge: Financing as a Product
Co-founders Eduardo Ospina Serrano, Nicolás Villegas Echavarría, and Jaibet Paola Santiago Ribón came at this from the hardware side. They had previously co-founded and grown Solenium, a solar installation company that reached over 30 employees [VC4A]. That experience taught them the bottleneck. "We realized the biggest barrier,and the biggest necessity,for clean energy is financing," Ospina told Cisco [Cisco Blogs]. So they pivoted. Instead of selling kilowatt-hours, Unergy sells the capital stack. A business signs a long-term power purchase agreement, and Unergy sources the investment to build the project, promising investors a return north of 10% annually [Crunchbase]. It's a bet that the software layer for project origination, investor management, and asset oversight is the missing piece for distributed solar at scale.
Traction and the $80 Million Catalyst
The model has attracted significant capital commitments, which is the clearest traction signal in infrastructure. While the company has raised a disclosed $5.3 million in equity across seed and pre-series A rounds, its real fuel is project finance [Dealroom] [LatamList]. In 2024, Unergy secured an additional $80 million in financing commitments, bringing its total committed capital to $120 million when including an earlier partnership with Solenium [Contxto] [LatamList]. This new tranche is earmarked for building 80 new solar mini-farms across Colombia.
The company reports it has already generated over 40 gigawatt-hours of solar energy in the country, facilitated over $30 million in investment, and created employment for more than 600 people in project regions [Contxto]. With a team now between 11 and 50 people, the focus is on execution [LinkedIn].
| Role | Name | Background / Note |
|---|---|---|
| Co-Founder & CEO | Eduardo Ospina Serrano | Previously co-founded solar installer Solenium [8, 9, 10, 11]. |
| Co-Founder & CTO | Nicolás Villegas Echavarría | Previously co-founded solar installer Solenium [12, 13, 14, 15]. |
| Co-Founder & CFO | Jaibet Paola Santiago Ribón | Associated with Solenium; listed as CFO [Crunchbase] [2]. |
| Head of Investment | Juan Manuel Londoño Pinzón | Part of the Unergy team. |
The roadmap is geographic expansion. The company plans to use its resources to move into Ecuador and Mexico, with an ambitious goal of reaching over 1 gigawatt of installed capacity within five years [16, 17, 18]. It's also venturing into agrivoltaics, planning projects that combine solar generation with agriculture in Colombia [SolarQuarter, Apr 2024].
The Risks in the Wiring
Unergy's bet is elegant, but it's wiring together two complex, regulated systems: project development and retail investment. The risks are correspondingly tangible.
- Execution at scale. Building 80 mini-farms is a logistical leap. Each project requires land rights, grid interconnection permits, construction partners, and offtake agreements. A stumble in execution could slow deployment and erode investor returns, which are the core product promise.
- Regulatory friction. Operating a platform that connects retail investors to solar projects invites scrutiny from financial and energy regulators, especially as it expands across borders. The model of fractionalized ownership via "uWatts" must navigate securities laws in each new country.
- Competitive response. The company is not alone in seeing this opportunity. European platforms like Trine have long connected investors to solar projects in emerging markets. More directly, large regional utilities and developers could move downstream, leveraging their own balance sheets to offer similar financing solutions to commercial customers, potentially squeezing Unergy's margin.
The founders' prior experience with Solenium is a natural hedge against the pure development risk. They know how to build a solar project. The regulatory and competitive challenges, however, are new terrain for a team that cut its teeth on installation.
The Unit Economics of a uWatt
Let's put a mini-farm on the back of an envelope. Assume a 500 kW project costs roughly $1 million to build. Unergy's committed $80 million could thus finance around 80 such projects, which aligns with their stated plan. If each project generates about 800 MWh annually and sells power at an estimated $70 per MWh, the annual revenue stream is around $56,000 per project. After operations and maintenance, the cash flow for investors might be $45,000, aiming for that 10+% return. Unergy's take would be a slice of that flow plus fees for origination and management. The model only works if the solar assets perform reliably for decades. It's a bet on Colombian sunshine and Colombian engineering, bundled into a financial product.
For Unergy to win, it doesn't need to beat the panels-on-roofs installers. It needs to beat the traditional project finance banks and funds that find small-scale solar too cumbersome. Its advantage is a software-driven platform that can aggregate many small projects and many small investors into a portfolio that, collectively, becomes a very large solar utility. It's a distributed answer to a centralized problem, one mini-farm at a time.
Sources
- [Cisco Blogs] Unergy: How a platform allows anyone to invest in and consume clean energy | https://blogs.cisco.com/csr/unergy-how-a-platform-allows-anyone-to-invest-in-and-consume-clean-energy
- [Dealroom] Unergy company information, funding & investors | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/unergy
- [LatamList] Unergy raises $4M in a Pre-series A round | https://latamlist.com/unergy-raises-5m-in-a-pre-series-a-round/
- [Contxto] Unergy raises $4 million and will build solar mini-grids to democratize access to clean energies | https://contxto.com/en/climate-tech/unergy-raises-4-million-and-will-build-solar-mini-grids-to-democratize-access-to-clean-energies/
- [VC4A] Unergy - VC4A | https://vc4a.com/ventures/unergy/team/
- [colombiaone.com, Nov 2025] Unergy: The Medellin Startup Redefining Colombia’s Solar Transition | https://colombiaone.com/2025/11/21/unergy-medellin-startup-colombia-solar-transition/
- [Crunchbase] Unergy - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unergy
- [SolarQuarter, Apr 2024] Colombian Start-up Unergy Ventures into Agrivoltaic Projects, Pioneering Renewable Energy and Agriculture Integration | https://solarquarter.com/2024/04/13/colombian-start-up-unergy-ventures-into-agrivoltaic-projects-pioneering-renewable-energy-and-agriculture-integration/
- [LinkedIn] Unergy | LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/unergyio