Now the startup Station A, founded by a pair of MIT alumni and their colleagues, is streamlining the process of deploying clean energy. The company has developed a marketplace for clean energy that helps real estate owners and businesses analyze properties to calculate returns on clean energy projects, create detailed project listings, collect and compare bids, and select a provider.
The platform helps real estate owners and businesses adopt clean energy technologies like solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers at the lowest possible prices, in places with the highest potential to reduce energy costs and emissions.
"We do a lot to make adopting clean energy simple," explains Manos Saratsis SMArchS '15, who co-founded Station A with Kevin Berkemeyer MBA '14. "Imagine if you were trying to buy a plane ticket and your travel agent only used one carrier. It would be more expensive, and you couldn't even get to some places. Our customers want to have multiple options and easily learn about the track record of whoever they're working with."
Station A has already partnered with some of the largest real estate companies in the country, some with thousands of properties, to reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings. The company is also working with grocery chains, warehouses, and other businesses to accelerate the clean energy transition.
"Our platform uses a lot of AI and machine learning to turn addresses into building footprints and to understand their electricity costs, available incentives, and where they can expect the highest ROI," says Saratsis, who serves as Station A's head of product. "This would normally require tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of consulting time, and we can do it for next to no money very quickly."
"My ability to build a thermal energy model and simulate electricity usage in a building started at MIT," Saratsis says.
Berkemeyer served as president of the MIT Energy Club while at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was also a research assistant at the MIT Energy Initiative as part of the Future of Solar report and a teacher's assistant for course 15.366 (Climate and Energy Ventures). He says classes in entrepreneurship with professor of the practice Bill Aulet and in sustainability with Senior Lecturer Jason Jay were formative. Prior to his studies at MIT, Berkemeyer had extensive experience developing solar and storage projects and selling clean energy products to commercial customers. The eventual co-founders didn't cross paths at MIT, but they ended up working together at the utility NRG Energy after graduation.
"As co-founders, we saw an opportunity to transform how businesses approach clean energy," said Berkemeyer, who is now Station A's CEO. "Station A was born out of a shared belief that data and transparency could unlock the full potential of clean energy technologies for everyone."
At NRG, the founders built software to help identify decarbonization opportunities for customers without having to send analysts to the sites for in-person audits.
"If they worked with a big grocery chain or a big retailer, we would use proprietary analytics to evaluate that portfolio and come up with recommendations for things like solar projects, energy efficiency, and demand response that would yield positive returns within a year," Saratsis explains.
The tools were a huge success within the company. In 2018, the pair, along with co-founders Jeremy Lucas and Sam Steyer, decided to spin out the technology into Station A.
The founders started by working with energy companies but soon shifted their focus to real estate owners with huge portfolios and large businesses with long-term leasing contracts. Many customers have hundreds or even thousands of addresses to evaluate. Using just the addresses, Station A can provide detailed financial return estimates for clean energy investments.
In 2020, the company widened its focus from selling access to its analytics to creating a marketplace for clean energy transactions, helping businesses run the competitive bidding process for clean energy projects. After a project is installed, Station A can also evaluate whether it's achieving its expected performance and track financial returns.
"When I talk to people outside the industry, they're like, 'Wait, this doesn't exist already?'" Saratsis says. "It's kind of crazy, but the industry is still very nascent, and no one's been able to figure out a way to run the bidding process transparently and at scale."
The founders credit their time at MIT with helping them scale.
"A lot of these relationships originated within the MIT network, whether through folks we met at Sloan or through engagement with MIT," Saratsis says. "So much of this business is about reputation, and we've established a really good reputation."
Since its founding, Station A has also been sponsoring classes at the Sustainability Lab at MIT, where Saratsis conducted research as a student. As they work to grow Station A's offerings, the founders say they use the skills they gained as students every day.
"Everything we do around building analysis is inspired in some ways by the stuff that I did when I was at MIT," Saratsis says.
"Station A is just getting started," Berkemeyer says. "Clean energy adoption isn't just about technology - it's about making the process seamless and accessible. That's what drives us every day, and we're excited to lead this transformation."
Research Report:The Future Of Solar Energy
Related Links
School of Architecture and Planning
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
