Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Founder operating in the Solar space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Jeremy Leggett
Founder of Solarcentury
Jeremy Leggett is the founder of Solarcentury.
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About Solarcentury: Solarcentury develops, constructs, owns and operates utility-scale solar and smart technology across Europe, Latin America and Africa.
Nick Boyle
Founder and CEO of Lightsource Renewable Energy
In 2010, Nick founded Lightsource Renewable Energy, then just a six-person start-up, which quickly grew over 5 years to become Europe’s largest solar developer and operator and a recognised global leader. In his role as Group CEO, Nick’s dynamic leadership and vision has driven the company to tremendous success and in December 2017, Lightsource announced a strategic partnership with BP which has committed aggressively to accelerate the low carbon transition. The company has rebranded to Lightsource BP in affirmation of this powerhouse commitment which is set to shape the future of global energy delivery. Nick previously sat at Board and Senior Director level in a number of leading retail financial service companies. Throughout his career, Nick has always been recognised for his entrepreneurial skill and success in pairing retail financial products with low-risk, predictable investments.
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About Lightsource Renewable Energy: Lightsource is a provider of ground and rooftop solar installations in the UK.
Vikas saluguti
Co-Founder and Director of Fourth Partner Energy
Vikas’ early career was spent as an investment banker with ABN Amro in Europe for over 10 years. Since his return to India, he has been a serial entrepreneur and investor in a variety of ventures in the area of water treatment, healthcare, IT and education. Vikas brings with him extensive experience in setting and scaling-up of businesses successfully.
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About Fourth Partner Energy: Fourth Partner Energy provides turnkey rooftop solar energy solutions for customers in India.
Henry Snaith
Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder of Oxford PV
In December 2010, Professor Henry Snaith co-founded Oxford Photovoltaics to commercialise the solar technology transferred from his laboratory at the University of Oxford. Henry undertook his PhD in organic photovoltaics at the University of Cambridge. Following his PhD, he spent two years at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as a post-doc, where his research focused on developing the technology behind and understanding of the operation of solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells. In 2012, Henry was awarded the Paterson medal and prize by the Institute of Physics for his important contributions to the field of excitonic solar cells. The following year his discovery of high efficiency metal halide perovskite photovoltaics was recognised as one of the top breakthroughs of 2013 by Science. In 2013, Nature named Henry for its list of ten people who mattered, in recognition of his work on next generation solar power technology and was one of the youngest ever elected Fellow of The Royal Society in 2015. In 2017, he was named a Clarivate Citation Laureate and in 2018 he received the UK Blavatnik Awards Laureate in physical sciences. In addition to his role as Chief Scientific Officer at Oxford PV today, Henry also leads the Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics Device Group at the University of Oxford.
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About Oxford PV: Oxford PV is a provider of perovskite solar cells.
Oluyemi Jegede
CEO and Co-Founder of Big Pot
Oluyemi is a whole energy systems specialist. His interests cut across the multiple energy vectors and the interactions between energy supply, demand and the wider economy. More importantly, he is an ardent believer in the promise of a thriving Nigeria and his passion has seen him birth the Bigpot initiative.
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About Big Pot: Big Pot is a power utility company which will provide energy to small and medium-sized residences.
Temi Jegede
Co-Founder of Big Pot
Temi has extensive software development experience (JAVA, XML, C++/ C, Python, Swift, PHP, Solidity (Blockchain development) stemming from a host of industry and University-based projects that have seen him contribute to the initiative’s growth in terms of power systems and software development.
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About Big Pot: Big Pot is a power utility company which will provide energy to small and medium-sized residences.
Tom Carr
Co-Founder of Verto Homes
Proactive, motivated and entrepreneurial, Tom is an expert in residential property development and brokerage. With over a decade’s experience in the industry, he knows the domestic and overseas markets well and understands the complexities of working in multiple jurisdictions. With several high quality developments under his belt, Tom has developed a wide range of residential property development skills. These include site acquisition, design, development, sales and marketing strategy and implementation. At Verto Homes, Tom’s focus is on sales and marketing. He’s also involved at the design and planning stages of every Verto Homes project.
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About Verto Homes: Experienced developers, building 20 Zero Carbon Smart homes that generate their own energy.
Richard Pearce
Co-Founder of Verto Homes
Richard Pearce is Co-Founder at Verto Homes.
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About Verto Homes: Experienced developers, building 20 Zero Carbon Smart homes that generate their own energy.
Laurent Van Houcke
Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer of BBOXX
Laurent is a graduate from Imperial College London where he obtained a first class honours (M.Eng) degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He was part of a team of students that founded “e.quinox” in 2008 and co-founded BBOXX in 2010.Laurent is responsible for macromanaging BBOXX’s operations globally from shipping to the point of sales going through marketing and long term business development in our different markets. Laurent has professional experience in the Energy Distribution Sector with EDF Energy in London and the Energy Consultancy Sector with Norman Disney & young. Laurent travels across our different markets to support BBOXX’s local partners from a technical, market and business development points of view.
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About BBOXX: BBOXX designs, manufactures, and distributes plug and play solar systems.
Christopher Baker-Brian
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer & Chief Technology Innovation Officer of BBOXX
Christopher is a graduate of Imperial College London, where he obtained a first class honours (M.Eng) degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He was part of a team of students that founded “e.quinox” in 2008 and co-founded BBOXX in 2010. Christopher is responsible for product development, supply chain and BBOXX’s manufacturing partnerships. In addition, Christopher has extensive technical experience in the petro-chemicals (Shell) and aerospace (Rolls-Royce) industries. He is a full member of the IEEE and IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology) and currently serves as a general member of the 2011-2014 IEEE Ad-Hoc Committee on Humanitarian Activities.
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About BBOXX: BBOXX designs, manufactures, and distributes plug and play solar systems.
Perry Carroll
Founder of The Solar Cloth Company
Perry Carroll is a Founder at The Solar Cloth Company.
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About The Solar Cloth Company: A multi-award winning innovator in the solar power market focusing on the integration of Thin Flexible Solar Panels into buildings.
Nigel Preston
Co-Founder & Vice President Product Management of Azuri Technologies
Nigel has 30 years’ global experience of embedded electronic systems development and manufacture. Previous positions include a variety of senior roles with Motorola’s Automotive business unit including European Design Centre Director, and more recently he was COO International Operations for Pi Shurlok. Nigel is a Chartered Engineer and holds a B.Eng. and PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Liverpool.
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About Azuri Technologies: Azuri brings affordable solar power to off-grid rural africans.
Ridha Azaiz
Founder of Aerial Power
Ridha Azaiz is Founder at Aerial Power.
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About Aerial Power: Aerial Power is developing UAV’s for the cleaning of solar panels, mirrors, and windows.
Ashutosh Natraj
CEO & CoFounder of Vidrona
Oxford University Researcher turned entrepreneur with 9 years of experience in academia and industry across the world such as IBM Research. Ash holds a PhD in Robotics and Computer Vision for UAVs(Distinction), Erasmus Mundus (ViBOT) scholar with 3 Masters in Robotics and Computer Vision.
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About Vidrona, Vine Rangers: Vidrona is a British AI Based Predictive Prescriptive Analytics Company for the Utilities. It helps utilities to increase RoI.
Molly Webb
Founder of Energy Unlocked
Molly Webb is a Founder at Energy Unlocked.
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About Energy Unlocked, The Climate Group: Energy Unlocked is accelerating energy system and market innovation, not specific technologies.
Ze’ev Emmerich
Co-Founder of T.S.D. Desalination
Ze’ev Emmerich is the co-founder of TSD Desalination.
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About T.S.D. Desalination: Low cost, modular and scalable desalination & water-treatment plants powered directly by solar energy
Richard Friend
Co-Founder of Eight19
Research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. Research group was first to demonstrate using polymers efficient operation of field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. These advances revealed that the semiconductor properties of this broad class of materials are unexpectedly clean, so that semiconductor devices can both reveal their novel semiconductor physics, including their operation in efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors.
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About Eight19: Eight19 develops solar cells using organic photovoltaic technology for solar power generation.
Allan ‘Noel-edge’ Okello
CEO & Founder / Director of Plexus Wifi
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About Plexus Wifi: City wide Solar powered payg wifi for African cities
Judy Pearson
Co-Founder, Director of EcoLogicLiving
The marketing power behind the throne thanks to a marketing degree and Diploma in Business Management, Judy has been with EcoLogicLiving since the very beginning. She enjoys travelling to exotic locations and scuba diving, although looking after two children is proving just as much of an adventure!
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About EcoLogicLiving: EcoLogicLiving is a reseller and installer of renewable energy, heat, and power generation technologies.
Steven Heape
Founder of Solar Team Great Britain
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About Solar Team Great Britain: Solar Team Great Britain is a brand new British team building a solar-powered car.
Lara Kazeem
Owner & Founder of LightBySolar Global
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About LightBySolar Global: LightBySolar is a Solar Energy Consultancy, Solar OEM Development, Supply & Manufacturing Company
