About Sunna Group

Did you know that the sun shines 24/7 in the summers in Sweden? In fact, Sweden has as many sun hours as Southern Germany in an average year. The mission of Sunna Group is to use that sunlight and transform damaged and unusable land to local sustainable energy production sites.

Sunna was founded in 2021 with the ambition to increase the amount of solar power in the energy system by developing, owning and managing large-scale solar power in the Nordic region. Sunna adds value to low-productivity land and increase access to locally produced solar electricity, enabling faster regional establishment and expansion of businesses, as well as supporting the electrification of society at large. 

Energy grid optimization with location intelligence

Congestion in the Swedish electricity grid is a limiting factor for new energy production and can delay or prevent connections for new power plants. Sunna Group helps to overcome this barrier by enabling more efficient use of the existing grid infrastructure and building a more robust electricity system using solar power and battery storage. To manage its solutions, Sunna needed a geospatial intelligence tool to gain an overview of the electrical grid and other spatial project-relevant data.

Sunna Group has developed a powerful data platform with aggregated grid data to quickly and accurately evaluate the conditions for large-scale solar energy and BESS (Battery Energy Storage System). The Sunna platform enables project managers to quickly evaluate the conditions for the electricity grid in a given area including the overlying grid. Combined with grid data, Sunna also applies remote screening to evaluate a project’s conditions as a whole, including analysis of natural values and biodiversity, solar radiation, and production simulations.

The platform developers at Sunna needed a map solution to render and work with their extensive custom datasets and support advanced, client-side spatial analysis functions. Mapbox stood out from other map platforms with great designs and clear documentation, allowing the developers at Sunna to get started quickly and develop the geospatial features of the Sunna platform at high speed.

Fast and flexible data rendering with Mapbox maps

Sunna Group uses Mapbox to visualize all the spatial data available on the Sunna platform, making it easy-to-use by Sunna project developers. Identifying suitable land for solar energy production requires an extensive library of data. The Mapbox Tiling Service allows Sunna to efficiently convert large datasets into optimized hosted vector tilesets, ready for fast rendering on the Sunna platform's map.

Customization options for Mapbox basemaps within Mapbox Studio lets Sunna highlight relevant features in the terrain and quickly locate buildable land. Mapbox Search helps project developers quickly find interesting sites based on nearby locations. Compatibility with React supports seamless integration across web, iOS, and Android so the Sunna team can access the platform from any site. 

Accelerating solar power development with smart location solutions

The maps within the Sunna platform illuminate data insights that make pinpointing the perfect locations for utility-scale solar possible. The Mapbox map interface combines data on land ownership, grid quality, and other geospatial considerations using an intuitive design. The resulting platform is a solution that accelerates the project development process and maximizes economic sustainability for landowners across Sweden.

Using Mapbox to support a custom location intelligence platform has helped Sunna Group to develop high-probability projects with short lead times for permitting and grid connection. The platform is the cornerstone of Sunna Group’s business development and enables their team to quickly identify properties that are suitable for solar farms. Sunna’s investment into building their custom location intelligence platform has fueled business expansion in numerous ways:

• Accelerated project development timelines: The platform makes it faster to identify and assess potential sites on low productive or damaged land.
• Reduced project risk: The Sunna team makes more informed decisions referring to comprehensive data in a grid congested world.
• Increased project success rate: Project developers can prioritize sites with the highest potential for successful development and energy generation.
• Streamlined grid connection analysis: Visualize grid capacity, proximity to substations, and potential connection points with ease.
• Centralized management of project planning: The platform provides a comprehensive project overview to manage the entire project pipeline in one central location, from initial site identification to advanced planning stages.‍
• Improved usability of complex data: The platform makes it more accessible to analyze historical solar irradiation levels to optimize plant design and energy yield forecasts. The platform also helps Sunna to ensure that projects are environmentally responsible by navigating land use and environmental data.
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