The power and design engineering firm that turns solar, storage and grid projects from a feasibility sketch into construction-ready reality.
Austin, Texas • Founded 2015 • "Watt you build matters. Watt we engineer lasts."
ILLUMINE-I, AUSTIN, TEXAS - The engineering house behind 3 gigawatts of clean power, photographed as its own brand mark.
The clean energy story usually gets told in hardware - cheaper panels, bigger batteries, faster chargers. Illumine-i lives one layer down, in the part almost nobody photographs: the engineering that makes a project buildable, financeable, and cleanly connected to the grid. Founded in 2015 by former Tesla, SolarCity and Sunrun engineers, the firm sells foresight before anyone pours a footing.
Its founders, CEO Nithish Sairam and Chief Product Officer Sudarsan Krishnan, started with a narrow frustration. In the residential solar rush, design was treated as a checkbox rather than a craft - and sloppy drawings meant rejected permits, messy interconnections, and rework nobody had budgeted for. Illumine-i turned that frustration into a business. A decade later it has engineered more than 3 GW of clean energy across 200,000-plus projects on four continents.
The company works with solar EPCs (including several of the top ten), developers, independent power producers, lenders and asset owners. It handles the full arc of a project: preliminary feasibility, detailed engineering, structural and electrical permit packages, interconnection support, and - for the money side - independent and owner's engineering reports that help close financing. Along the way it expanded from rooftop solar into battery storage, EV charging, microgrids and substation design, plus a construction-engineering practice built around BIM, VDC and MEPF modeling.
High-voltage problems require high-fidelity foresight.
Utility, community, C&I and residential solar PV; battery energy storage; microgrids; and EV charging stations. On the delivery side: substation design, power system studies - load flow, short circuit, arc flash - and protection & control. The output is a permit-ready, grid-ready package.
Added in 2019, the construction practice covers MEPF modeling, Scan to BIM, city modeling, and VR/AR/MR walkthroughs. It brings the same discipline that clears solar permits to the buildings, campuses and infrastructure that host them.
EPCs, developers, independent power producers, lenders and asset owners - anyone who needs engineering capacity without carrying a full in-house team. For a lender, that means an independent report clear enough to underwrite. For an EPC, it means permit packages that don't bounce. One lender's verdict, in the firm's telling: the independent engineering report "was the clearest we've seen - deal closed in weeks."
Panels are cheap and capital is available, but every project still needs someone to make it buildable and grid-ready. That engineering capacity is a genuine bottleneck in the energy transition. Illumine-i absorbs it - catching structural and interconnection issues early, standardizing drawings, and automating the repetitive parts so projects move faster with fewer surprises.
Residential, community, C&I and utility-scale PV - feasibility through construction-ready permit, structural and electrical packages.
Standalone, co-located and hybrid battery systems, including microgrid configurations.
Civil, electrical and interconnection engineering for Level 2 and DC fast charging stations.
Substation design plus power system studies and protection & control for clean grid delivery.
Reports and advisory that de-risk projects for lenders, IPPs and asset owners.
MEPF modeling, Scan to BIM, city modeling and VR/AR/MR walkthroughs.
As solar, storage, EV charging and the grid converge, the advantage shifts from single-technology specialists to teams fluent in how the pieces connect. Illumine-i sits at that intersection - and competes on breadth, turnaround, and trust rather than being the cheapest drafting shop. Its scale, measured in the work it has already engineered, is the argument.
Figures self-reported by Illumine-i. Bar lengths are illustrative, scaled for comparison.
Against independent-engineering incumbents and one-off permit vendors, Illumine-i pitches a single engineering partner that follows a project from feasibility through operations - built on three stated values: innovation (automating and modeling problems early), integrity (flagging the issue even when the fix is inconvenient), and intimacy (staying involved long enough to earn trust). Its mascot, a sea otter named Ive, stands in for resilience and ecosystem thinking.
Prior roles at Tesla, OneRelf Energy and NextEra Energy.
Background at Sunrun, SGC Power and Black & Veatch.
Former Tesla, SolarCity and Sunrun engineers launch the firm to support residential and C&I solar developers.
Adds MEPF modeling, Scan to BIM, city modeling and VR/AR/MR walkthrough services.
Transitions to turnkey engineering for DG and utility-scale solar PV, storage and EV charging.
Raises Series A led by Anicut Capital to scale operations and build automation tools.
Surpasses 3 GW engineered and 200,000+ projects delivered across four continents.
We're thrilled to have the backing of Anicut Capital as we enter our next stage of growth.- Nithish Sairam, Founder & CEO
Nithish and Sudarsan have built a very strong and scalable business in the renewable energy market.- Adithya Bharadwaj, VP, Anicut Capital
Watt you build matters. Watt we engineer lasts.- Company vision
Engineering the ultimate handshake: your project & the grid.- Illumine-i
B2B engineering services and consulting, billed by project or by consulting hours. Illumine-i provides outsourced, turnkey design capacity to EPCs, developers, IPPs, lenders and asset owners across residential, C&I and utility-scale markets.
$2 million Series A (about INR 17 crore), February 2024, led by Chennai-based Anicut Capital. Estimated annual revenue is around $15 million. Capital is directed at operational scaling, geographic expansion and automation.
It is a power and design engineering firm that provides turnkey engineering for solar PV, battery storage, EV charging, substations and grid infrastructure - from feasibility studies to construction-ready permit packages, plus independent and owner's engineering.
Nithish Sairam (CEO) and Sudarsan Krishnan (Chief Product Officer) founded it in 2015. Both previously worked at leading solar firms including Tesla, SolarCity and Sunrun.
It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with engineering operations in Chennai, India, and roots in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A $2 million Series A round (about INR 17 crore) led by Anicut Capital in February 2024.
Solar EPCs (including top-10 firms), developers, independent power producers, lenders and asset owners across residential, commercial and utility-scale clean energy projects.
Sources: illuminei.com, Inc42, Crunchbase, Tracxn, The Org. Figures self-reported by the company and approximate where noted.