Kunal Girotra, a chemical engineer and former head of energy products at Tesla, has just launched a new startup dedicated to providing home energy storage solutions that benchmark the Powerwall. During his five-year tenure at Tesla, he led energy product development including Powerwall, solar panels, and photovoltaic rooftops, and in 2018 Girotra was promoted to head of Tesla Energy until his departure in 2020.
After leaving Tesla, Girotra funded a new startup called Lunar Energy and is focused on providing home electrification/energy independence solutions to households around the world.
After successfully securing significant funding from key partners, Girotra confirmed that Lunar Energy will first launch a home battery system, but no further details have been disclosed.
"More than ever, we need to adopt renewable energy in all sectors to mitigate the effects of increasing climate change. Lunar Energy was founded with the primary goal of building cost effective hardware and software products for the residential sector. To help households produce, store and consume 100% clean energy and eliminate their dependence on traditional fossil fuels."
As Lunar Energy’s first eco-product, the company is bringing a new generation of home energy storage systems.
This is the first step in its mission to electrify all homes and connect communities to form clean, resilient virtual power plants.
Not only will it save everyone from unexpected power outages, but it will also proactively address rising energy costs and control harmful emissions.
In addition to benchmarking the Tesla Powerwall, Lunar Energy has also partnered with Sunrun, the number one residential PV installer in the US, and SK, a large battery supplier.
Lynn Jurich, Chairman of Lunar Energy and Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of Sunrun, commented.
"As an entrepreneur, I was looking for a unique opportunity to invest in visionary and talented individuals. Coincidentally, Kunal Girotra and the team of engineers at Lunar Energy are manufacturing home electrification products at scale. This will greatly accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and we are excited to see Sunrun and the industry as a whole begin to deliver Lunar Energy-based energy solutions to millions of homes across the United States."
Interestingly, Sunrun partnered with Tesla to install the Powerwall back in 2020, but Sunrun is said to be having trouble getting supply chain support from Tesla, as the tech giant has been focused on delivering its products directly to customers.
In addition to the aforementioned just-publicized partnership, Lunar Energy also announced the acquisition of Moixa. A UK-based distributed energy (DER) management software company, it hopes to combine its revolutionary hardware with its proven GridShare software.
The software, renamed Lunar Gridshare, is powering a large-scale deployment of 330 MWh batteries at ITOCHU in Japan (covering 35,000 homes), currently serving Honda electric vehicles and UPS’s pure-electric fleet in the UK.
