AES invests in Sydney-based solar innovator 5B solar

AES Corp, the Virginia-based global power company recently announced that it has made a strategic investment in 5B, a Sydney-based solar technology innovator, to help client accelerate their use of solar energy. 

5B raised $8.6 million in the latest investment round that included AES. 5B's MAVERICK design enables customers to add solar resources at a pace that is three times faster while providing up to two times more energy within the same footprint of traditional solar facilities.

"Solar is the most abundant clean energy source in the world, and 5B's innovative design produces twice the energy for any given area," said Andrés Gluski, President and CEO of AES. "In addition, a project using 5B's technology can be built in a third of the time when compared with conventional solar. These significant advantages will help us meet our customers growing needs in today's everchanging environment." 

MAVERICK design is a pre-wired, prefabricated solar solution that is folded up, shipped to the site, and rolled out. MAVERICK also helps removes common barriers for organizations to deploy solar resources, including the availability of land and ground penetration, making solar possible in more places while providing the flexibility to easily relocate the resources in some applications. 

According to the official statement by the company, AES will benefit from the use of 5B's MAVERICK technology across many of the projects in its expected 2 GW - 3 GW of annual renewables growth. This year, AES Panama will fast-track the delivery of a 2 MW project utilizing the MAVERICK solution. In Chile, AES Gener will deploy 10 MW of MAVERICK technology as a part of the expansion of its Los Andes solar facility in the Atacama Desert in the north of the country. 

"5B has delivered the speed and efficiency benefits of our MAVERICK solution in the Australian market, and now AES is bringing its strength to bear as we scale our solution globally," said Chris McGrath, Co-founder and CEO of 5B.

In recent times, AES has made growing strategic investments in energy technology platforms. The company also played a foundational role in the creation and growth of the energy storage market through Fluence, its joint venture with Siemens. Today, Fluence is the largest grid-scale battery energy storage solutions company in the world. AES is also collaborating with Uplight, the leading digital customer energy platform in the US.