business of sunlight

We founded Candela to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. This requires more than just building renewable energy infrastructure. It demands the skill and experience crucial to lowering the cost of solar power in an environmentally sensitive manner. For the business of sunlight to be truly sustainable, solar power must be competitively priced and reliable. This is where we shine.

As an independent developer, Candela is technology-agnostic: we select and deploy the best solar equipment and complementary technologies - such as battery storage - which benefit project owners, power purchasers, landowners and other constituents. And because utility-scale solar power generation is capital intensive, we focus on creating financeable projects that are structured to provide predictable and resilient returns to investors and lenders.

Candela was founded by Brian Kunz and Nik Novograd, who previously worked together at NextLight Renewable Power and First Solar. Nextlight was one of the first and leading utility scale solar power companies. It was acquired by First Solar, Inc., where Brian ran North and South American Project Development and Origination and Nik was VP, Project Finance.

Brian co-founded NextLight in 2008, bringing together a team of highly experienced professionals from the traditional power industry to focus on the then-emergent solar power field.

Until then, solar energy generation was restricted primarily to small photovoltaic projects on rooftops or modest solar thermal projects using technologies such as parabolic trough mirrors. NextLight helped launch the utility scale solar industry by developing much larger projects utilizing photovoltaic equipment, which was rapidly becoming more cost efficient.

These projects broke records for scale, helped drive down costs, and are now successfully operating across the United States. Today, many of the same professionals who worked together at NextLight and First Solar form Candela's core team.