The self-supply energy company Samara, until now focused on Madrid, has opened a hub in Catalonia, in Vilafranca del Penedés. At the head of the company is the Catalan Manel Pujol, who years ago was the first Uber employee in Spain.
Samara was founded in June 2022 and is specialized in installing solar panels offering comprehensive services (from technical analysis and commissioning, to management of administrative permits) to its clients, mostly from the residential sector. Samara has closed two financing processes in its first six months of life, two million euros from the pre-seed round and 4.5 million last December. In both, it has had the participation of Seaya and Pelion Green Future, European funds specialized in sustainability.
Currently, its workforce is around 60 employees and it is hiring new staff, most of them local workers. "The regulatory change has been a turning point for energy self-consumption," says Pujol. “Spain had been behind Europe for ten years and we are in a moment of recovery. The situation plays in its favour: solar panels are the gateway to the future electrification of the home”, adds the businessman. More than 200,000 families installed self-consumption panels in 2022, according to the Association of Renewable Energy Companies (APPA), and forecasts suggest that Spain will be the second European country with the most solar installations to complete by 2026. Only in Catalonia, the 87% of them are domestic and this is the market served by Samara.
The company ensures that the energy bill can be reduced by up to 70% and that the cost of the investment is recovered after four or six years, depending on prices and the surplus that is returned to the network.
