From: Mercom Capital Group

Here is a roundup of corporate funding and M&A deals from last week covering the global renewable energy industry:

SenseHawk, a SaaS platform that helps customers develop, build, and operate solar and other infrastructure sites, has raised $5.1 million in Series A1 funding. The investment round was led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), a $300 million venture fund, managed by Falcon Edge Capital, a global alternative asset manager, and backed by ADQ, one of the largest regional holding companies based in Abu Dhabi. Existing investor SAIF Partners also participated with a follow-on investment.

CleanSpark, a software solutions provider that helps power utilities and IoT (Internet of Things) products that manage energy loads, completed a strategic acquisition of GridFabric. GridFabric is a software solutions provider to streamline load shifting on the power grid. CleanSpark will utilize GridFabric’s communications protocols as part of the demand response offerings.

India-based Grinntech, a start-up set up to develop and manufacture Lithium-ion batteries for electrical vehicles, has raised $2 million from four investors, including former vice-chairman of Ashok Leyland V Sumantran and Cognizant co-founder Lakshmi Narayanan. The other two investors are UCALGroup and KS Manian, promoter of Radiance Group.

Energy Access Ventures (EAV) announced a follow-on investment in Solarise Africa, a pan-African clean energy and energy efficiency leasing company. The round was led by the French development finance institution, Proparco, which invested the €4 million (~$ million) in quasi-equity through the AFD Group EU-funded African Renewable Energy Scale-Up facility, alongside existing investors, EAV and EDFI ElectriFI, an EU-funded impact investment facility.

Swedfund, the Swedish Development Finance Institution, has committed $12 million to the Solar Energy Transformation Fund managed by SunFunder. The investment will contribute to increased access to electricity, as well as the increased generation of renewable energy for exposed demographics in the least developed countries in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD’s DAC) list. The investment is in line with Swedfund’s Energy & Climate sector goals of investing in the off-grid sector for solar energy, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than half of the total population lacks access to electricity.

For reports and trackers on funding and M&A transactions in solar, energy storage, smart grid, and efficiency sectors, click here.

Read last week’s funding roundup.