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Nearly two months after solar lantern startup d.light design expanded its pay-as-you-go financing system for solar lanterns and home solar systems, the company has raised $22.5 million in a Series D debt and equity round to help scale that financing solution globally.

The company raised $11 million in 2014, a considerable sum at the time for off-grid solutions. But the industry has accelerated considerably in the past year. Earlier this month, Bboxx raised $20 million, bringing the September 2016 total for off-grid financing to more than two-thirds the total of $60 million raised in all of 2014. The industry raised about $200 million in 2015.

Of course, the financing is a drop in the bucket compared to what is poured into centralized grid solutions. Willie Brent, a spokesperson for nonprofit Power For All, noted that no development bank has spent more than 2 percent of its budget for energy projects in the developing world on distributed energy solutions.

For example, this week, USAID's Power Africa announced more than $1 billion for debt and finance for power generation and distribution across sub-Saharan Africa, but only a small fraction of that is for the off-grid sector. USAID has provided grant dollars to d.light and other off-grid startups.

While solutions are needed across the power value chain in developing nations, off-grid solutions can often be deployed faster than large, capital-intensive projects. Also, producing more power when distribution is lacking does not solve the challenge of addressing those who inhabit the most severe realms of energy poverty. The grid won't meet them in their lifetimes, if ever,†said Michael Gera, managing partner of d.light investor Energy Access Ventures.

For example, even though d.light plans to scale its solar system business, most of its sales still consist of solar lanterns, some of which have a mobile-phone charging option; only a small fraction are solar home systems.

The company has sold more than 14 million solar lanterns and...