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Created in 2006, Sunvie designs photovoltaic projects for companies and local collectives in order to:
- develop and optimise solar potential of french sites,
- diminish their energy budget by investing in renewable energy,
- sustainably reduce their CO2 emissions,
- solidify the commitment of companies and local communities in favour of the environment.
Convinced from the start that:
- the production of solar electricity in France can be cost-effective,
- photovoltaic perfectly answers varied energy expectations and requirements,
- solar should become a reflex during all construction or renovation project.
Sunvie has made the choice to intervene as a designer, builder and exploiter.
With its experimented project managers, all engineers specialised in solar installations, Sunvie designs turnkey and economically sustainable photovoltaic stations. The objective is to contribute to the development of solar sector in France.
Sunvie advises and accompanies companies and local communities who wish to exploit their available spaces (roofs, walls, parking lots, ground…) and who wish to make energy savings. Accordingly they give value to certain of their assets thanks to an investment which turns them into energy producers.
This photovoltaic specialist develops ad hoc solutions adapted to tertiary companies, industrial companies, territorial collectives, to mass distribution (GMS) and to mass promoteurs (offices, residences…).
Sunvie considers itself independent from manufacturers and suppliers: through its structure as contractor, it offers its clients all the necessary competences to design, realise and implement successful, profitable and sustainable photovoltaic solar stations.
The invention of the ‘ombrières’
It all began with the hunch of Marco Caputo and Pierre Morane, co-founders of Sunvie, to work on parking lots of commercial centers. At the end of the summer of 2006, they had developed a solution of photovoltaic coverage to shade cars all while producing solar electricity.
How to baptise the invention? They drew their inspiration from a XVIII century botanical dictionary: it would be a ‘shade’, a greenhouse which produces shadiness according to its historic use. That is how carports became “ombrières”
At the end of 2006, Sunvie designed of a carport project for E. Leclerc: the 1st installation of over 1 MW built in France in Saint-Aunès in l’Hérault. The day of the inauguration, Marco Caputo was interviewed by Jean-Jacques Bourdin. Very aesthetic and visible, this new service for users allowed the supermarket from the South-East of France to improve its’ attendance by practically 10%.
The obsolete botanical term imagined by the founders of Sunvie has since then entered the language. According to Wikipedia, a carport is ‘a structure destined to offer shade, constituted of a high-up horizontal or oblique surface and its supports’.
The Photovoltaic is a source of savings
Over the last 15 years the drop in price of photovoltaic models has been spectacular – their price has been divided by 20. Each one of us can produce our own energy by means of a photovoltaic installation to provide for his own needs. This is called auto-consumption.
On a large portion of the French territory, auto-consumption today is able to produce photovoltaic energy at a lower cost compared to the price you can buy energy from the network.
The savings made will be all the more important as the price at which we consume energy shall continue to significant increase in the years to come.
Consequently, producing directly on the site on consumption avoids the transmission losses (on average in France 2,58 kWh of primary energy must be produced on an installation to consume 1 kWh by the end of transmission). In the long term, this will be a source of significant savings.
