How Rowan Energy fits into the bigger picture of home renewable energy generation
From the days of the solar-powered calculators we all loved in school, solar power has come a long way.
Next month Rowan Energy Blockchain is going into the homes of 100 home solar generators, to give them the financial rewards they have deserved for so long.
The Rowan Smart Miner is not, however, a stand-alone piece of tech. It integrates & works with the user’s exiting solar technology to track & measure the amount they produce while tokenising the carbon offset certificates they will be rewarded for.
To understand the entire ecosystem Rowan Energy if slotting into there are a number of factors
— Solar Panels & hardware
— Grid integration vs local storage
— Carbon Offset Certificates — REC’s
— Greenhouse gas emissions of solar power vs traditional energy sources.
— Existing feed-in-tariffs & financial benefits of solar
— How the Rowan Energy solution brings benefits
What hardware do you need for home solar power generation?
The Rowan Energy solution is designed to integrate into existing home solar setups or be provided with new setups.
The key to home solar is the solar panels, & in particular, the surface area used to generate the power.
Traditionally solar panels would have been placed in a fixed location onto the roof of your house, chosen with prevailing sunlight conditions to maximise their production.
Modern ground mounted solutions now offer an alternative to this, creating systems that move to track prevailing sunlight, much as a flower might throughout the day.
While expensive to set-up solar panels are a long term investment with lifespans from 25–40 years, with minimal maintenance required.
Give them a clean & wipe off any leaves occasionally, & unless something hits them they should be fine.
Once they generate their power it is sent through to a DC>AC inverter, making it into “useful” electricity.
At that point there are 2 approaches, The first is to use that power much as you ordinarily would use electricity, to power your home.
Alternatively, you may transfer that power back to the grid, taking advantage of a feed-in tariff which pays you a small amount.
What to do with home-generated renewable energy we don’t use?
Currently, there are primarily 2 options for the power you generate.
You use it, or you send it back to the grid for a minimal amount.
The missing piece until now has been batteries to effectively store your power locally until it is needed. Previously these have been expensive & extend the time until you see an ROI.
With modern technology, however, in particular the race towards electric vehicles, we are seeing a rapid improvement in battery technology, & a decreasing price.
New technology from the likes of Samsung & Tesla is enabling home solar users to store excess energy to use at times when there is no natural generation.
Other companies such as EDF offer discounts on batteries in order to create a network of power storage to help balance the peaks & troughs of energy production.
The beauty of the Rowan Energy solution is that by integrating our Smart Miner, you are rewarded no matter what you do with the power.
It only matters that you produce it.
Once you have done so you can use it, store it, or sell it back to the grid in the same way you have always done.
What are REC’s & why do they matter?
Renewable Energy Certificates, also known as Carbon Offset Certificates, go under a number of names but the principle is the same.
They are a digital asset energy commodity, which can be traded between generators of renewable energy & buyers so the buyer can say they have purchased renewable energy.
In doing so they incentivise a carbon-neutral renewable energy approach, through subsidising renewable energy sources.
So why don’t all home solar & renewable energy creators sell them?
Previously each certificate represented 1 megawatt-hour of electricity & any organisation or individual creating them had to go through an expensive certification process.
The advantage of Rowan Energy is that, through use of the Rowan Blockchain, we enable certificates to be tokenised into 1-kilowatt-hour certificates.
As each home in the UK generates on average 22 kWh per day, it would take almost 2 months to produce a single 1mWh certificate, even before facing the costs & effort of certification.
We enable home users to take advantage of this process, tokenising the certificates & selling them while paying each user directly for their generation.
Greenhouse gases & solar energy
Traditional energy sources create a lot of greenhouse gas, we all know this, & we all understand it is an issue.
For example, an oil-fired power plant emits an average of 893 grams per kilowatt-hour.
A coal-fired plant (due to be completely phased out in the UK by 2025) a huge 915–994 g/kWh.
A combined-cycle gas-fired plant is better at 400–600 g/kWh.
But solar runs at 22–46g/kWh. That's roughly 2–3% of the greenhouse gas produced from a coal-fired plant.
Take into account, that isn’t just during the time it is used, it includes the manufacturing of the hardware, so as solar panel tech improves, it is expected to drop to around 15g/kWh.
This is a big part of the reason Rowan Energy wants to fairly reward home solar & renewable energy producers.
The more homes we can get using home solar, the less greenhouse gas will be produced from manufacturing, running & maintaining legacy systems, & the better our planet will be.
What about Feed-in tariffs?
Feed-in-tariffs were a government subsidy that financially rewarded home solar producers for their power.
These began in the UK in April 2010 as a means to encourage solar & renewable energy generation, while reducing the UK’s reliance on legacy fossil fuels systems.
Fairly soon after their availability for larger installations (50kw+) was cut, ideally to allow the funding to be directed more to home & smaller power generators.
Over time, however, the rate continued to be cut across the board, until in March 31st 2019, the UKs feed-in tariff scheme was removed for new applicants.
As a result new installations also began to drop.
While those who had previously signed up for the scheme continued to receive benefits, people looking to install home solar & generate renewable energy were now left with unattractive financials.
This means they may not even repay the initial costs until after the lifespan of the hardware they were buying.
The Rowan Energy system looks to solve this problem by rewarding all renewable green energy producers, through tokenised RECs.
Production of these does not affect current subsidies so people still getting returned from feed-in tariffs can benefit as well as new home solar owners looking to reduce the time it takes to recover their initial costs.
How does the Rowan Energy system benefit home renewable energy generators.
No-one like complicated.
No-one likes expensive.
No-one likes “might work”.
So at Rowan, we make things simple, cheap to set-up but financially rewarding, & effective.
When you sign up with Rowan, either as an existing home renewable generator, or as a newcomer getting your first panels installed you get an app & you plug in a box.
That’s really it.
Once you have them your electricity generation is logged, you are rewarded automatically, & you can manage it yourself.
It really is that simple.
You don’t lose out on any benefits you already have, you don’t have to use your power any differently, or stop your feed-in tariff.
You just get access to generating Carbon Offset Certificates, tokenised so you can produce them rather than them just being restricted to large-scale producers.
Once signed up you sit back and do exactly what you were doing except this time, every 10 minutes you produce power you automatically get rewarded.
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To find out more visit RowanEnergy.com
