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ISIDE

Project Idea Metadata

Project Idea Description

About Us

Esa-Nex is a company founded by Marco Morselli and Rinaldo Sangalli. Marco is an Aeronautical Engineer with both managerial and entrepreneurial experience in IT (14 Years), engineering (11 Years) and management of complex projects. Rinaldo has a 25 years entrepreneurial experience in electric systems, solar energies and industrial automation. Other team members are Laura Colini experienced in authorization procedures and certifications for renewable energy systems and Andrea Benetello expert in Management & Executive Consulting, Manufacturing & Supply Chain Management.

The problem

The cost of energy increased significantly in the last period and to reduce the heating cost in houses and factory, the only solution the market proposes is based on Solar Thermal Panels (or Solar Collectors) which are quite inefficient. The thermal power obtained through solar collectors, entails system management problems as overtemperature in the summer or inefficient thermal production in winter. As a consequence, for an effective contribution to building and industry heating systems, especially in winter time, too many panels would be required with significant increment of cost. During the summer instead, many of those panels, would not be needed anymore and they require to be disconnected form the system in order to avoid overpressure. We searched for alternatives and so far, we didn't find solutions for final consumer available in the market at affordable cost in replacement of solar collectors. There could be different reasons for such vacancy, probably the main ones stay in the complexity of the solution and therefore they end in too high investments. Our proposal is ISIDE which is an efficient, reliable CSP heat generator that can really be integrated into existing heating systems at affordable investments to reduce heating costs in buildings and industrial processes.


The Solution

The ISIDE solar disk fits perfectly within the arena of renewable sources for the integration of heating systems in buildings and for the needs of industrial plants that use heated water up to 90°C. Its 1,6mt disk produces 35-40% more energy than surface-equivalent solar thermal panels. At Swiss latitude ISIDE can produce 1700 Kwh which correspond to a saving of about 250 m3 methane per year equivalent to 1100 Kg of CO2 saved. The most interesting advantage is certainly that performance is not influenced by the ambient air temperature and it maintains high efficiency even in the winter time.

Furthermore, ISIDE is robust and reliable, internet connected and attractive in design to capture the passions of users.

Despite other CSP systems ISIDE is designed to operate in a range of temperature not exceeding 600°C keeping the fluid below 100°C in such way lot of problems derived from high temperatures are not present.

ISIDE disks can be also combined together (up to 7) on a bigger frame in order to rise 12Mwh. This solution is valid to dry organic compost for agriculture purpose or to produce air conditioning systems in location where the electric energy is not available (for instance: certain villages in Africa)

Potential customers

ISIDE can be installed to the following customers:

· residential or public building

· industrial facilities

· industrial production processes that require heat up to 90°

· industrial processes that require cooling up to 5°C and with a power greater than 200Kw.

Combining 3 to 7 disks ISIDE can be installed to the following customers:

· Biologic sites to dry organic compost

· Facilities that require air condition systems where electricity is scarce

Competitors

As of today, for the purpose of integrating the heating and colling systems of building or industrial processes with renewable energy sources, there are not real competitors. Solar collectors are mostly used to heat Domestic Hot Water. For the purpose of integrating heating systems, solar collectors have a lot of problems.

They are very heavy and bulky,

Systems with glycol water (antifreeze) need expensive maintenance and suffer from serious overheating problems in the summer months. All the excess summer heat is lost and overheating (also called stagnation) can cause irreversible damage to the panels and the system. They provide plenty of hot water in the summer when is not needed and the productivity is very low in winter when instead there would be a great need. Especially flat panels suffer from the negative influence of the external winter temperature.

The integration in the heating system is practically null.

Majority of potential customers instead to install solar collectors opt for the installation of Photovoltaic panels to produce electric power for the purpose of heating water.

The Market

The latest report from the SHC IEA, Solar Heat Worldwide 2022, recorded a 3% growth in the global solar thermal market in 2021 after seven years of decline this is probably due to the increased cost of oil/gas.

The global solar thermal capacity installed at the end of 2021 was 522 GWh, corresponding to 746 million square meters of collector surface area (about 50 Mio installations thereof 10 Mio in EU).

EU, recorded a sales increase of 3.4% corresponding to 1.59 GWh, or more than 145.600 solar collectors installed. The largest European market is Germany with 36% of share. Swiss market is 2.8%.

Swiss represent a potential market of about 4000 installation per year which correspond to a CO2 saving of about 4400 ton.

Project Status

We already developed a first prototype to prove that the solution provides the expected performance. After tests we could see that performance are good but the mechanic was not enough reliable to guarantee years without problems. We designed a second prototype much more industrialized with the purpose to test and collect data for thermal performance validation (with an external advisor SUPSI) and to test and validate the system reliability.

The roadmap foreseen then the development of a small Minimum Viable Product (MVP) series to be provided to early adopters for the final customer validation. During this phase we would like also t to deepen the customer needs to freeze the “customer to product” specifications. During this phase we want also to obtain the final product certification for the production

Once the above prototypes provide positive results, we enter in to the Go to Market phase (1 year) which consists in setting up the organization to operate the business model

The Business Model

The business model is both B2C or B2B types and it consists in:

1. Set-Up a company responsible for Marketing, Sales, Customer care and R&D. Focus is to perform the acquisition of target customers using funnels techniques. Management of social traffic and human feedback.

2. Set-Up a network of Suppliers qualified and selected to keep ready in stock a number of components available at all times for sales.

3. Set-Up a network of properly qualified and instructed Installers. Once they receive the assembly order from the sellers, they perform the installation. To be loyal, they must have a number of ready-to-use ISIDE disks available according to the assigned area.

4. Set-Up a network of Professional Designers who take care of validating the feasibility of the installation, drawing up the authorization procedures for the local authorities, and validating the conformity of the work done by the installer.

All relationships and processes between the various figures will be managed by ISIDE through an owned SW. All the figures described above will be found with the funnel technique and specifically motivated.

Funding

If we win the challenge, we use the 20Kchf to finance the second prototype

According to our business plan the full project requires 2,2 Mio (CHF) capital hereafter subdivided:

Y1 (0.4Mio Capitalization) to achieve the milestone of 20 MVP sold/provided to early-adopters for the final customer validation plus certification.

Y2 (1,1 Mio Capitalization) to initialize the business model qualifying 13 installers in Swiss

Y3 (0.5 Mio Capitalization) for the implementation of the final model.

Y3 we also need 200KCHF loans (interest 8%) totally refunded in Y4

Final capitalization 2Mio CHF

Expected Profits

Assuming to gain the 2,6% of CH market in Y2 the Business Plan is set in order to achieve in Y5 the 20% of Swiss market, the 3,6% of German market and the 19% of Italian Market.

The final profit in Y5 is of about 5Mio.

Breakeven is expected in early Y4 with ROI over 5 years equal to 50%


To reduce the heating cost in houses and industry processes there are not effective solutions today. Solar Collectors can be just used for Domestic Hot Water because they are inefficient in winter and they need expensive maintenance to avoid serious overheating problems in the summer. Our Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) disk ISIDE instead, is an efficient, reliable heat generator that can really be integrated into existing heating systems at affordable investment to reduce heating costs.