Privacy statement & privacy policy
1. Introduction
Autarco stands for security, simplicity and respect. Your privacy is important to us, and so is being transparent about how we collect, use, store and share information about you. This privacy policy applies to Autarco’s services, websites, web applications and any other interactions you, as (an employee of) a business partner or as an owner or end user of an Autarco PV system, may have with us. If you do not agree with this policy, do not access or use Autarco’s websites, web applications or any other aspect of our business.
2. Collected information
We collect personal information when you provide it to us, when you use our services, and when other sources provide it to us.
2.1 Contact information
Autarco stores names, email addresses and phone numbers of partner employees and other PV system stakeholders such as end users. Partners include retailers, distributors, installers and maintenance providers. Such contact information is provided directly or indirectly by business partners to facilitate project management, asset management and customer support, and to create web accounts for accessing Autarco’s web applications. We occassionally collect contact information of prospective business partners from public or commercial records such as company websites, social media, chamber of commerce records, etc.
2.2 Street addresses
Autarco stores the installation address of PV systems, which commonly correspond to the street address of their end users. This information is provided directly or indirectly by our partners on a project basis, and allows our web applications to offer visual PV layout design on roofs and to calculate expected kWh yields. Partners also provide us with customer billing addresses and project delivery addresses.
2.3 Photos of your PV installation
To be eligible for a kWh guarantee, we require installers to provide us with photographic evidence of a highquality PV installation. Therefore, if you are the beneficiary of a kWh guarantee, we will have photos of your roof.
2.4 IP addresses
Autarco stores the IP address of the remote source of received inverter monitoring messages. These data are received automatically from installed inverter communication sticks every 5 minutes, given sufficient connectivity.
2.5 Web analytics
Autarco stores various types of behavioral metadata of visitors of our websites and web applications, such as IP address, approximate location, interaction statistics, etc. These data are collected automatically whenever you visit our websites or web applications, for the purpose of improving user experience and customer satisfaction.
2.6 Other personal information
Various unstructured forms of personal information may be provided to us in the context of providing customer support and resolving PV system issues, such as details about end users’ home routers or a history of maintenance activities performed. Unstructured personal information is stored only if it is necessary for continued effective delivery of customer support.
2.7 Non-personal data
Based on your street address and following the use of our PV design tools, we may have data regarding the size, orientation, pitch and shading profile of your roof. After installation of your Autarco PV system, monitoring data messages are sent from your inverters to us for performance analysis and visualisation purposes. Besides the remote IP address, these messages contain only operational statistics about the inverters themselves and their direct DC and AC environments.
3. How we use your information
Autarco uses personal information for the following purposes.
3.1 Delivery of goods
Contact information of involved business partners are necessary to organise efficient delivery of goods purchased by customers. Further personal information such as street addresses may be necessary to arrange just-in-time delivery at installation sites.
3.2 Providing services Autarco uses personal information to provide the following types of services.
- PV design based on customer preferences, site characteristics and business case
- Project management and collaborative tender management
- Issuance of kWh guarantees to beneficiaries
- Asset management, including underperformance alerts
- Creating and managing web accounts for Autarco’s web applications
If you are the end user of a PV system we detect is underperforming, we generally attempt to contact your installer or retailer, so that they can resolve issues with you directly. In rare cases, like warning you of issues that may impact your kWh guarantee or if your installer or retailer is unresponsive or inactive, we may contact you directly.
3.3 Billing and administrative matters
Autarco may need to contact you for invoicing, accounts management or similar reasons.
3.4 Customer support
Autarco uses personal information to provide effective technical support to business partners and end users.
3.5 Newsletters
Autarco uses profile information to send you occassional newsletters containing relevant news such as event invitations, product announcements and service updates, if you have given us consent to do so.
3.6 Business improvement
Autarco may use aggregated personal information to improve the quality of our products and services. We do not attempt to profile your actions or habits.
3.7 Legal
Autarco shall use personal information as required by applicable law, legal process or regulation.
4. How we store and secure your information
Autarco takes security of data very seriously, and we work hard to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access or disclosure. We apply appropriate technical and organisational measures to secure your data, taking into account the sensitivity of the data as well as the current state of technology. All our employees treat your personal information with confidentiality. The cloud infrastructure service providers we use to host the information we collect, are selected based on product security, reliability, operational security practices, regulatory compliance and privacy policies. Technical measures we have taken to protect your personal information include:
- Permission-based access control in our web applications
- SSL support in all websites and web applications
- Two-factor authentication in our online productivity suite and file share
- Passwords are never logged, always stored encrypted Your personal data is retained for no longer than is necessary to achieve the purposes stated in this privacy policy or to comply with applicable law.
5. How we share your information
Your personal information is not shared with or sold to other organizations for commercial purposes, except to channel partners to provide the products or services you have requested, or when we have your explicit permission. Inverter performance data may be shared with third parties after anonymization for the purposes of solar research or better understanding solar performance. We may share performance data with our insurers for the purpose of making claims under the insured kWh guarantee. Autarco may disclose personally identifiable information under the following special circumstances:
- It is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Terms of Service of the specific application, or as otherwise required by law.
- We transfer information about you if Autarco is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, Autarco will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
6. Your data rights
You may at all times exercise your statutory rights in relation to your personal data. These include:
- Right of access: you may request any data we have collected from you.
- Right to rectification: you may rectify incomplete or inaccurate data.
- Right to be forgotten: you may request us to delete all of your personal data.
- Right to restriction of processing: you may request us to limit the scope of personal data we process.
- Right to data portability: you may request an export of your personal data for re-use in other services.
- Right to object: you may object to our processing of your personal data.
- Right to human decision making: you may demand that an Autarco employee is involved in important decisions affecting you. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us by email at privacy@autarco.com.
Please note that exercising some of these rights, particularly your right to be forgotten, your right to restriction of processing and your right to object, will cause you to lose the ability to track the performance of your PV system(s) using our web applications, and any kWh guarantee on the systems will be void.
7. Changes to this privacy policy
Autarco may periodically update this privacy policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice via email to all registered users of our products and services. 8 How to contact us If you have any questions about the way we obtain, use, store or share your personal information, please contact us by email at privacy@autarco.com.