Brite Solar is a nanomaterials company that develops semi-transparent solar panels for agricultural applications. The company’s mission is to “contribute to secure food supply for the world at affordable prices”. This Thessaloniki-based scale-up is a member of our Agri & Food Tech group.

We were honoured to speak to Dr. Nick Kanopoulos, the company’s founder and CEO. He explained the “secret sauce” of Brite Solar’s technology as “enabling the triple use of land, meaning protection of the crops from adverse weather, water management, and energy production.” All this is done without impeding the yield of farming.

Listen to the interview here (or watch the video below):

Optimising light and resources: The science behind Brite Solar's Agri-PV 

With the global population set to increase to 9.7 billion people by 2050, the world is facing a serious food supply problem. Dr. Kanopoulos explains:

“In order to feed this many people, we need to increase food production by 70%. This is not possible with conventional means, because agriculture consumes 70% of water and 14% of energy globally. So, we have to use technology to resolve the nexus of food, energy, and water.”

Brite Solar is striving to do just that with its Agri-PV (photovoltaic) technology. It involves constructing a canopy over crops in either greenhouses or open fields, aiming to protect the crops, prevent crop yield loss due to adverse weather, collect and utilise rainwater, and decelerate evaporation. Experimental data has already shown a 20-40% reduction in water usage in olive groves in Spain, for instance. 

Furthermore, Brite Solar’s technology produces clean energy, thereby reducing the CO₂ footprint per kilogram of food or crop produced. Agri-PV installation also offers an additional income stream for farmers through the sale of the generated energy when connected to the grid.

The key innovation lies in the company's ability to adapt the transparency of their PV panels to the specific needs of the crops growing beneath the canopy. This ensures that the plants receive sufficient light for optimal photosynthesis and yield, consistent with their geographical location. 

Brite Solar uses nanomaterials coated on the panels that absorb ultraviolet (UV) light, which is either ineffective or harmful to plant growth. These nanomaterials then downshift the UV radiation into the visible spectrum, specifically within the range that plants use for photosynthesis. In other words, the technology converts unusable light energy into photosynthetically active energy, which ultimately contributes to increased crop yields.

A strong technical team and ambitious expansion plans

Brite Solar’s CEO, Dr. Kanopoulos, is highly experienced in leading global semiconductor product development, mass production, and marketing teams, and has worked with startups, large corporations, and academic institutions.

The rest of the scale-up’s team consists primarily of physicists, synthetic chemists, and mechanical and electrical engineers, due to the company being in the process of completing a manufacturing line for their product, which requires significant operational expertise.  

Brite Solar currently employs 30 people in Greece as well as other countries, like Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and the US, with the international team primarily being involved in sales. The company anticipates doubling its size by the end of 2025.

Asked about the biggest challenges, Dr. Kanopoulos tells us that, being the only company that develops such technology in Greece, sourcing engineering talent has been very difficult. Funding is the second challenge, as the venture capital ecosystem in Greece is focused mostly on seed and early-stage investments, rather than scale-ups.

Fortunately, Brite Solar won an EIC blended finance proposal, helping them to close a Series A funding round of €9 million that enabled the completion of their Agri-PV manufacturing line.

Award-winning innovation and a promising future with the EIC Scaling Club

Brite Solar is proud to have launched its first product and its installation in numerous locations worldwide. A significant and challenging achievement for the scale-up is the completion of its production facility, which is one-of-a-kind in the world. This uniqueness stems from its integration of both the nano-coating process for the solar panels and the assembly of the panels themselves. The company takes great pride in establishing this capability in Greece. 

Furthermore, Brite Solar has received numerous innovation awards and patents, accomplishments that the entire team values highly. We are also happy and proud to see them among the ranks of the EIC Scaling Club, hoping to bring value and many opportunities to the team!

Watch the full interview with Nick Kanopoulos below, or visit our YouTube channel to explore more video content: 

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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