Until last year, Sunly was building hybrid energy parks across the Baltic’s and Poland. A year ago, we took on a new challenge in one of these markets: entering Estonia's retail electricity market.
Estonia made sense. We've operated here the longest, we know the market, and its size is compact enough that a new service provider can enter, learn fast, and improve with every customer. We went back through the first year's numbers, and they tell a story about our customers.
Not Your Average Electricity Consumers
While most of Estonians sit on fixed tariff packages, our customer's are on another level.
66% of Sunly customers generate their own electricity: they own a solar park. One in five of those also has battery storage. They aren't just buying power, they're managing it and want to do it smartly. They monitor the electricity prices, read the fine print, notice quickly when something could be better.
Their feedback has helped us improve our invoice design, self-service functionality, and pushed us on mobile application development. And that has made us better in the process. We’re building an electricity service that people want to use, together with our customers.
Growth Driven by Our Customers
Our customer base grew 30% a month on average in year one. But the number that matters more is where those customers came from: mostly friend referrals and social media.
We fixed a problem for those customers. We offered fair pricing to solar producers who were experiencing increasing grid sales margins with other service providers. When a customer had a question or concern, we looked for the cause and found a solution, not just a standard answer.
That lines up with our the fact that 70% of our customers would recommend us to their friends. People who aren't just satisfied, they tell others.
Why People Choose Sunly
The honest answer: a good buyback margin, and margin-free exchange electricity. It's that simple. People run the numbers and choose what pays off for them.
Clarity and simplicity in electricity market is hard to come by. But that has been our goal all along - to make electricity simple and useful for the people.
What's Next
Year one taught us that we're not just an energy developer, we're an ecosystem builder. Producing renewable energy, storing it, supplying it, and helping you use it smarter, whether that's a battery or shifting when you use power. Retail electricity in Estonia is one piece of that. It gave us daily conversations with the people actually using the energy we build, and that's reshaping how we think about the whole picture.
Thank you to our customers for being part of this journey. Year two will be even better.