The Airbnb of Solar?
A Bright Future for Blockchain Based New Energy Sharing Economic Platform
Despite tremendous growth in the worldwide solar market over the last decade (from 2GW to 78GW, 43.29% CAGR, 2006~2016), current solar business models and the existing regulatory environments have not been designed to provide the easy access to a significant portion of potential photovoltaic (PV) system customers. As a result, the economic, environmental, and social benefits of distributed PV are still limited to a select number of customers only. Traditional distributed solar models typically rely on the decision by individual home or building owners to adopt PV systems via different direct purchasing, leasing, financing options. Optimal customers for hosting rooftop-mounted systems have ample unshaded roof space relative to their energy consumption, unilateral decision making authority regarding that roof space, and high credit scores to enable low-cost financing.
In reality and unfortunately, these restrictions limit solar market participation to a minority of residential and commercial energy consumers nowdays. While the technical potential of on-site, single-customer PV is significantly larger than its current installed capacity, distributed deployment strategies only directed at on-site, single-customer systems limit the speed and flexibility at which PV can be deployed in the United States or anywhere else, and potentially increase the cost. As customer demand for solar increases, so does the impetus to develop innovative business models and utility programs that can enable and retain direct participation from all types of energy consumers.
Community solar is an innovative solar energy deployment model that has successfully implemented in Germany for many years, and that is gaining popularity across the United States. Community solar models encompass approaches to solar deployment that connect community stakeholders to increase the penetration of renewable energy. Such models include group purchasing, crowd financing and community investment, and donation based models. As demonstrated in Figure 1, community solar programs can site, fund, and sell electricity from PV systems in several different ways.
Shared Solar Will Help to Expand the Customer Base to 100% of Homes and Businesses!
Emerging business models for solar deployment have the potential to dramatically develop the solar market, expanding the potential customer base to 100% of homes and businesses. Options such as shared solar can enable rapid, widespread deployment by increasing access to renewables on readily available land and rooftop sites, lowering costs via economies of scale, and fostering innovation. Fundamentally, these models remove the need for spatial one-to-one mapping between distributed solar arrays and the energy consumers who receive their electricity benefits. The output of offsite solar arrays can be shared among residential and commercial energy consumers lacking sufficient unshaded roof space to site an array. Solar developers or installers can construct arrays in optimal locations on marginal lands or unused rooftops and offer community members the opportunity to participate directly and benefit. Shared solar arrays sited on apartment buildings and shopping malls can provide stable electricity bills to landlords and tenants. Retailers and municipal buildings that host shared solar systems can provide electricity and other benefits to the community and generate goodwill. Utility-sponsored shared solar programs can reach large numbers of energy consumers. Table 1 summarizes some potential benefits of shared solar deployment.
Despite the many potential benefits of shared solar programs, there are challenges to successful implementation of these programs. As described in Table 2, customer adoption practices, additional rate design implementation, and further clarity and uniformity on how to structure a shared solar program must all be addressed if shared solar is to achieve its full potential.
Shared Solar Market Deployment Potential
Sources: CSI 2015; Barbose et al. 2014
Residential Shared Solar Market, to estimate the rate that shared solar will possibly take a new financial business model to develop fully within the residential PV market, it could follow the same trend as existing residential solar deployment rate, the time it took the TPO, Third Party Operator business model to reach its peak percentage of the market. Residential TPO, which in large part started in 2006 with the founding of SolarCity, solved many of the barriers to PV adoption for homeowners. However, it took 6 years for TPO’s market share to reach a relatively steady state (Figure 2).
The shared solar marketplace will need to develop in many of the same ways that the TPO market developed, such as expanding shared solar businesses nationwide, promoting customer awareness of a new financial product, and changing some state and local laws to accommodate the new business models. Shared solar will go through this growth process over a similar period, estimating that the residential shared solar market will possible require 6 years or longer term (from 2015–2020) to reach full maturity, growing from 15% of its potential in years 1–3 to 35% in year 4, 65% in year 5, and 100% in year 6.
Cumulative shared solar installations could constitute 3.1–6.3 GW of PV for residential customers, including 1.3–2.6 GW in 2020 alone (Figure 3). This could represent an additional $4.7–$9.3 billion of cumulative investment.
Non-residential Shared Solar Market, from 2015–2020 shared solar could cumulatively install 2.4–4.7 GW of PV for non-residential customers, including 1.0– 2.0 GW in 2020 alone (Figure 4). This could represent an additional $3.5–$7.0 billion of cumulative investment.
Combining the potential market penetration of the shared solar business model in the residential and non-residential sectors, shared solar could represent 32%–49% of the distributed PV market in 2020, growing cumulative PV deployment by 5.5– 11.0 GW and representing $8.2–$16.3 billion of cumulative investment.
A Blockchain Based Green Token will Change the Way We Produce & Consume Energy!
A new blockchain based token will be launched via ICO, Initial Coin Offering or ITS, Initial Token Sale campaign in the near future and aims to empower individuals and communities to easily manage and share locally produced renewable energy, the project aims to become an example of how to harness the capabilities of blockchain technology to create greater social value and to support a bottom-up transition towards a more distributed, robust, and transparent economy, underpinned by 100 percent renewable energy.
With the Green token, community members are able to make secure, peer-to-peer transactions directly between their own virtual currency ‘wallets’.
Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, ensures that these transactions are secure and decentralized, with the history of all transactions being shared with all the community members, so they can be automatically verified without needing the intervention of a ‘trusted’ bank.
This Green ecosystem is possible because there are millions of site will be featured a private renewable energy-based smart-grid. This enables the community to exchange renewable energy produced by their solar PV panels, without any restrictions, and therefore avoid existing market barriers.
With the shared solar platform, the community can easily manage their own micro-economy, and unlike purely speculative currencies, the Green tokens are backed up by physical energy production.
Next Green Unicorn Startup will Drive Green Eco System, by Leveraging Smart Grid & Blockchain Technology
Shared solar business models allow multiple energy consumers to share the electricity benefits of one PV array. Fundamentally, these models remove the need for a spatial one-to-one mapping between distributed PV arrays and the energy consumers who receive their electricity benefits, thus expanding the potential customer base for PV to 100% of homes and businesses. As is the case with virtually all scenarios of PV deployment, technical barriers must be overcome in order to meet a significant portion of electric demand using solar. However, shared solar business models come with a number of potential benefits, some of which may overcome a portion of these technical issues. By aggregating customer demand, shared solar programs can reduce financial and technical barriers to entry and reduce costs via economies of scale.
Shared solar remains a small — but growing — model for deploying PV systems. Currently, there are several issues that governments, utilities, and the solar industry can address to accelerate the shared solar market. Enacting enabling legislation in more jurisdictions and creating greater standardization and transparency will attract more investors and customers, expedite the development process, and allow businesses to expand more easily into new regions. As these new business models and legal frameworks are established, continued attention to compliance with the federal securities laws and consultation with the SEC where necessary will create more confidence within the market, and it will reduce restrictions, delays, and costs.
Beyond just enabling energy exchange, the community will be exploring further applications for the shared solar platform, such as using it to trade for goods at the Cafe, to facilitate a local time-banking system, and to integrate other intra-community services, such as a car-sharing program. Besides the peer-to-peer blockchain trading system, the shared solar platform also features a real-time power-flow map of the community, high-resolution data visualizations, and machine-learning forecasting systems, which provide users with greater insights into their real-time energy use and projected production and consumption.
