A lot of homeowners in the US are moving towards renewable energy by installing solar panels at their homes. Even if the energy is not sufficient to meet their needs completely, solar panels will save at least $100 on the energy bills every month. So, they can easily save at least $1000 every year. Also, the value of a home powered by solar energy is high which will help the owners to rent or sell their homes easily at competitive rates when compared with other homes.
The greatest advantage of solar energy is the price stability when compared with traditional energy derived from fossil fuels. The cost of solar energy remains constant for a long period because the manufacturers provide a warranty of at least 20 years for the solar panels. Even though the installation cost of panels may be high, the maintenance cost is very low. So, there will not be any fluctuation in the cost of solar energy. Alternatively, the cost of traditional energy is controlled by the energy companies or utilities and the consumers don’t have any control over the fluctuations. Whenever the utilities increase the cost of energy, the consumers don’t have any other option but have to pay the additional amount.
What are the main challenges facing the solar energy industry? Even though solar energy provides a lot of benefits to the consumers by reducing their energy bills and saves the environment from pollution, there are some challenges faced by the renewable energy producers which are given below:
- As power generation from renewable energy sources like sunlight largely depends on the climatic conditions, it is not possible to predict the minimum or maximum energy generation for a particular time interval. The existing grid-based infrastructure is transmitting the energy as soon as it is generated as there is no concept of storage. But, solar energy needs to be stored and transmitted if it has to replace the traditional energy from fossil fuels. So, a lot of research needs to be done to find out an effective solution for integrating the renewable energy with the existing grid system.
- Most of the solar panels are fixed in one place. As the sun is moving, it is not possible for the stationary solar panels to get 100% rays. So, new technologies need to be developed so that the panels will receive maximum rays from the sun.
Do you know why most of the solar energy projects don’t reach the final stage? Lack of funds. Yes. Many of the renewable energy producers don’t have sufficient funds to achieve their goals. To motivate those green energy producers, a company named WePower is developing an energy trading platform based on the blockchain technology. WePower allows the energy producers to raise funds for their projects by issuing their own energy tokens. Let’s assume that a fictional company name SolarX is using renewable energy source like the wind for the generation of power. It needs 1 million USD to finish the development. It can simply tokenize their future energy to raise the needed capital. Sounds Interesting? Kindly visit the official whitepaper of WePower https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_OW_EddXO5RWWFVQjJGZXpQT3c/view to learn more information about the platform. If someone wants to access the platform, they need to hold WPR tokens. Check out https://wepower.network/ to find out the benefits of WPR tokens and the procedure to buy them.
Image Credit: David Cristian