HOMER helps bring renewable energy home

BOULDER — With more than a billion people living without electricity across the globe and little chance of getting conventional utilities soon, many innovators pinned their hopes on renewable energy, but clean-energy solutions such as wind and solar come with their own set of challenges.

“That’s why we created HOMER,” said Peter Lilienthal, chief executive officer of HOMER Energy LLC, a software and consulting company that helps people in remote areas create reliable energy systems using large portions of clean energy.

HOMER software, or the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables, began when Lilienthal worked at the Boulder-based and federally funded National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He commercialized the product in 2009 and founded HOMER Energy. Company revenue soared since then.

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HOMER Energy has increased annual revenue 232 percent from $167,302 in 2010 to $555,916 in 2012, placing it No. 4 on the Boulder County Business Report’s Mercury 100 list of fastest-growing companies in Boulder and Broomfield counties for companies reporting less than $2 million in annual revenue.

HOMER’s 14 employees are Boulder-based, but the company does 75 percent of its business in remote regions of the world devoid of reliable power sources. Downloads of HOMER software have now approached 100,000, and the company’s consulting and training service clients include for the U.S. military, The World Bank, small islands and college campuses.

Proper timing with an emerging market, its NREL connection, a focus on business growth and Lilienthal’s own expertise spurred HOMER’s growth, said Marilyn Walker, HOMER Energy’s chief operating officer.

“Peter is arguably the world’s expert on hybrid systems, and it’s a brilliant piece of software,” Walker said. Additionally, HOMER’s history with NREL and its outstanding international reputation in renewable energy opens doors for the company.

Increased oil prices, a drop in the cost of renewable products, such as photovoltaic cells, and an increased interest in emergency preparedness after numerous extreme weather events around the world made it the right to for growth in HOMER’s niche market, what Lilienthal calls microgrids.

A microgrid is a small energy system that depends primarily on renewable energy rather than diesel fuel, gas or electricity from a grid, he said. HOMER analyzes these systems identifying gaps in service and offers solutions on how to fill those gaps. The microgrid then becomes reliable, safe and cost effective but still based mostly on renewable energy sources.