Palmetto

Palmetto is a Charleston, SC-based clean energy technology company that operates a residential solar and storage marketplace, connecting homeowners across 25+ U.S. states with vetted local solar and storage installers. Founded by Chris Kemper, the platform simplifies the entire clean energy journey - from instant home energy assessments and transparent pricing to financing options (including its LightReach solar PPA product), installation coordination, and ongoing monitoring via a consumer app. Palmetto has powered the equivalent of 97,000 homes for a full year and is approaching 1 terawatt-hour of cumulative solar energy generated across its customer base.

Beyond its marketplace, Palmetto has invested heavily in proprietary technology infrastructure. After acquiring Mapdwell, a solar mapping startup, it built advanced AI-driven tools that simulate digital twins of every residential building in the United States - modeling 60+ home characteristics and attributes to calculate energy savings from solar, battery storage, and heat pump electrification without requiring an in-person site visit. In 2025, Palmetto opened this capability as an Energy Intelligence API to outside developers, enabling third-party builders to access its residential building models and accelerate broader home electrification efforts nationwide.

Palmetto sits at a critical node in the U.S. residential clean energy supply chain, acting as the software and systems integration layer between homeowners, local installers, equipment manufacturers, and financing providers. By standardizing and digitizing the residential solar and storage installation workflow - and now expanding into HVAC/heat pumps - Palmetto is helping to scale distributed energy adoption at a time when grid decentralization is essential to U.S. energy resilience. Its platform approach, combining a consumer-facing marketplace with a developer-facing API, positions it as foundational infrastructure for the emerging "new utility" paradigm.