5B Holdings

5B (5B Holdings Pty Ltd) is an Australian clean technology company that designs and supplies the 5B Maverick, a prefabricated, pre-wired modular ground-mount solar array. Each Maverick unit carries up to 90 solar panels on purpose-built frames that are assembled in a controlled, automated factory, shipped, and then unfolded and installed on site in an accordion-like manner. The company positions the product for utility-scale solar farms and for land-constrained or remote sites.

The company states the system deploys up to 10x faster than conventional solar technologies, generates up to 1.6-2x more power per hectare annually than conventional tracking systems (citing DNV Energy Systems modelling), delivers roughly 5x workforce efficiency, cuts onsite DC cabling work by around 75%, and reduces time on geotechnical, mechanical and electrical activities by roughly 80%. 5B also promotes a 93 m/s wind resilience rating for the Maverick and notes that factory prefabrication reduces onsite exposure to hazardous conditions, weather-related construction delays and mechanical failures.

Disclosed deployments span grid-connected, behind-the-meter and off-grid applications, including 69MWp at Jobos in Puerto Rico (1,396 Mavericks, in delivery), a 141MWp undisclosed Australian project (2,592 Mavericks, in delivery), 26MWp at Bellevue Gold and 17MWp each at the Kathleen Valley lithium mine and Jundee Operations in Western Australia, a 10.6MWp grid-connected remote solar farm with AES in Chile, 12.8MWp with SA Water in Australia, 10MWp at an off-grid nickel mine in WA, 2.12MWp with AGL at a hydrocarbon processing plant, 1.9MWp with AES and 1.2MWp with Enel in Panama, and 1.2MWp of off-grid power at Wurrumiyanga in the Northern Territory.

Business model

5B supplies its Maverick solar hardware to solar project developers, utilities, mining companies and industrial energy users, with deployment supported by a network of 5B Ecosystem Partners; capacity is delivered as prefabricated units manufactured in factories rather than assembled component-by-component on site.

Traction

By December 2022 the company reported deployment across more than 100 sites worldwide with over 60MW of generating capacity and more than 50 customers. Company figures published on its site report 179 project sites globally, 5,800 Mavericks deployed and 253 MWdc deployed, with a 69MWp Puerto Rico project and a 141MWp Australian project in delivery. Recorded deployment speeds include 1.1MW in a single day at AES' Andes Solar II B in Chile's Atacama Desert with a team of 10, 10.6MWp in 43 days with a team of 10 in Chile, 12.8MWp in 52 days with a team of 13 for SA Water, and 342 Mavericks (17MWp) in 50 days at Kathleen Valley.

Latest developments

In December 2022 5B closed an AUD55 million Series B round co-led by existing investors The AES Corporation and Artesian, including an AUD20 million investment from bp ventures, whose Principal Johnathan Stone joined the board; proceeds were earmarked for technology development, international expansion and a North American manufacturing and assembly hub. Subsequent company news items report AUD46 million in incentives and funding secured from ARENA, a wind resilience record, TIME naming 5B among the world's top greentech companies of 2025, CEO David Griffin being named among Australia's Top 100 Energy players, and Zenith Energy completing a 16.9 MW 5B solar farm deployment on a Northern Star Resources waste rock dump.