The effective development and use of solar energy will lead to a world in which individuals can own..

“The effective development and use of solar energy will lead to a world in which individuals can own energy. Individuals build solar power plants easily, and if you pay for a subscription like Netflix, they take care of complex operations and management instead.”

H-Energy CEO Ham Il-han recently expressed his ambition in an interview with Maeil Economy. Founded in March 2018, H Energy is a climate tech startup that has presented a groundbreaking model that allows individuals, not companies or institutions, to receive power generation profits through solar power plants.

CEO Ham explained the company’s business model, saying, “It is a platform that subscribes to power like YouTube, shares the roof of a building like Airbnb, and allows everyone to produce energy as a business operator and consumer.”

CEO Ham, who graduated from POSTECH’s Department of Mathematics and studied computer engineering at the same graduate school, quit his job and entered the path of start-up with confidence that “I think I can create a new model if I do the solar power generation business from the perspective of mathematicians and engineering students.”

The model he paid attention to was the platform. This is because he thought efficient management through the platform was important because it was almost impossible to manage by humans if small power plants were installed on the rooftops of buildings or roofs of houses throughout the country rather than huge power plants. In addition, it is important to create a predictive model due to the nature of power that changes supply and demand from time to time, which was perfect for CEO Ham, who majored in mathematics and computer engineering.

H Energy’s departure is the energy investment platform ‘Mohat’. It is an investment model that pays about 10% of interest every month when an individual invests in a solar power plant owned by a cooperative and commissioned by H Energy. This is meaningful in that it allows individuals to own the core resource of energy, not just investing in companies.

Furthermore, H Energy has made it easy for anyone to become a power generation operator through its “Solar Oncare” service, which enables efficient power plant management. In the meantime, many places were closed because individuals could not manage power plants properly, but SolarOnCare guarantees more than a certain level of solar power generation by using software and systems to effectively operate and manage them. If you pay about 20,000 won a month, you can manage it without having to look at the power plant one by one. Solar Oncare was selected as a venture country by the Public Procurement Service on the 22nd and installed solar power in the future, but public institutions that lack management capabilities can use the service without any bidding process.

Thanks to these innovations, the number of solar-on-care power plants nationwide exceeded 3,700 as of this day. Accumulated investment has exceeded 300 billion won, and the performance is also steep. Sales and operating profit, which were 22.4 billion won and 700 million won in 2022, respectively, jumped to 102.3 billion won and 15.6 billion won last year. Recently, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy selected mid-sized companies with growth potential and also listed them as “World Class Plus,” which supports them to grow into competitive companies in the global market. It aims to go public on the KOSDAQ next year.

CEO Ham said, “Many people say that solar energy is less efficient than power generation, and the most abundant energy resource available to Korea is the sun,” and stressed, “I want to share profits from the sun with the people by creating a solar ecosystem that includes investment, production, and consumption.”

[Reporter Lee Hojun]