“The group currently has 20 million euros available to invest in the Iberian Peninsula, in the areas of solar energy, charging stations for electric mobility and energy storage, among other investments to improve energy efficiency”, he revealed.

In 2025, the company, based in Coimbra, plans to make “investments in excess of one million euros in the area of ​​charging stations” in both countries, said the person in charge.

“We will diversify our operations with the installation and operation of electric vehicle charging stations, an area in which we intend to make several investments as early as 2025,” said Raul Santos.

With a team of 15 engineers, SunEnergy provides employment for a total of 130 people, covering professionals from almost 30 delegations that operate in Portugal under a 'franchising' regime, including in the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira.

“We had some audacity when launching the project, in 2009, when in Portugal there was practically no talk of renewable energy, nor solar energy”, he recalled.

At the time, what existed in this area “were small initiatives with little relevance” and the company “had almost no competition”.

“We were experiencing the difficulties inherent in starting any innovative activity, starting with very small projects, but we currently have 185,000 solar panels installed,” he declared.

Specializing in solutions for companies and individuals, SunEnergy has taken on “the mission of promoting the importance of renewable energy and solar energy in particular”.

“We did ‘evangelization’ work. This has helped solar energy to have a much greater penetration in Portugal at the moment”, said the company's founder, who gives “an extremely positive assessment” of the 15 years of activity.

In SunEnergy's branch network, “people work closely with the brand”, applying “the company's solutions throughout our territory”, said Raul Santos, a biochemistry graduate from the University of Coimbra, at whose Faculty of Economics he also held a MBA postgraduate degree in management.

“Each project is different and our engineers develop and work on the needs of each client”, he said, explaining that the delegations “are legally independent entities, with the brand being the aggregating element”.

In 2023, the company expanded into Spain, with its revenue reaching 15 million euros that year, which represented a 30% increase compared to the 2022 fiscal year.

Meanwhile, it is also investing in the energy storage area, having so far installed a thousand lithium batteries totalling 5MWh of capacity.

SunEnergy “shares some of the concerns” of citizens and organizations about the impact of large solar farms on the landscape and environment.

“We do not intend to work on these large solar parks. Our focus has been and will continue to be on decentralized production across these fields, which is what we truly believe in”, replied Raul Santos, when asked by Lusa about the problem.