Daniel Domingues built Planno around a frustration he’d watched play out for years working in the solar industry: developers spending months hunting for viable rooftops worth building on and contacting their owners. A process that he knew lacked efficiency.

The company he founded leverages recent advances in GeoAI technology and data intelligence, offering developers and stakeholders a unique tool that scales solar in a much smarter way.

Now, with a strategic investment from Incubayt Investments, Planno is scaling into new markets at a moment when rooftop solar is increasingly seen as a hedge against volatile energy prices.

The sustainability-focused venture firm founded by Sami Khoreibi, who built the Arab world’s first utility-scale solar developer, is dedicated to supporting and cultivating innovative founders driving sustainability in every aspect.

“The solar industry has never been short of capital or sunlight,” said Sami Khoreibi. 

“What it lacked was intelligence. Where to build, and who owns the roof. In a data-driven economy, that insight is as valuable as the projects themselves. Planno is exactly that.”

For the Portuguese founder, it’s a notable vote of confidence from one of the UAE’s most experienced solar operators. 

“Bringing Planno to my home country is personal,” he said in a recent interview. He’s described Portugal as one of the most exciting solar markets Planno covers in Europe — clear decarbonisation targets, excellent sun, and a commercial and industrial rooftop segment that remains, in his words, largely untapped.

Now, with support from Incubayt, Domingues has been able to expand into 16 global markets, and hopes to make Planno available to others, with the goal of democratizing intelligence to developers of all sizes. 

Proof the model works at home

In December, Planno partnered with SparkWave Energy, one of Portugal’s fastest-growing solar developers, backed by Octopus Energy Generation. SparkWave is rolling out a national portfolio of C&I solar projects and targeting significant installed capacity by 2027, in a distributed-generation market expected to add more than 500 MW a year. It’s now using Planno’s platform to find and pre-qualify rooftops in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Major energy players are increasingly betting on AI to modernise the industry, turning to forward-thinking startups like Domingues’s to get there. 

“SparkWave Energy shows how private energy players can accelerate the transition through decisive investment and technology,” Domingues said of that deal. “Our platform helps transform data into faster, smarter deployment.”

Why the timing works

The backdrop is an energy market where electricity keeps getting more valuable and more expensive. Global demand is heading for record levels as data centres and electrification pull harder on grids, and Domingues’s pitch for rooftops is really a pitch about control. “Oil and gas are global commodities. Even countries that produce them feel every shock, because the price is set somewhere else,” he said. “Rooftop solar is one of the few cost-control levers a commercial operator actually owns.”

Portugal is chasing 80% renewable electricity generation by 2026, and much of the remaining work is exactly the kind Planno specialises in. An increasing number of stakeholders are turning to rooftop solar, and moving away from megaprojects, like utility farms. But the challenge of identifying which rooftops and building a reputable pipeline is where the bottleneck lies in quickly advancing these types of projects.

“We want every solar developer in every market, not just the largest ones, to have proper data to work with,” Domingues said. For the developers dotted across Portugal trying to compete with the majors, that’s the whole point.