Introduction

With Tesla's solar roof has made solar panels more affordable and cosmetically appealing. No more bulky, ugly panels placed on your roof. The cells blend in with the other tiles. It cost around the same price as putting on a usual roof on your home. It also has a lifetime/infinite time warranty because they are made of tempered glass and made to be 3 times stronger than a typical roof tiles.

Blockchain technology is being used and explored for all kinds of ingenius ways.
One group in New York has been one for a solar energy share. Renewable energy and more energy sources are a must. The more sources of energy the more robust the system is and we do not have to rely solely on fossil fuels. Peer to peer sharing of it optimizes the usage as well. It can be tracked and shifted around as needed between the network.

Charity/philanthropy

The blockchain mentioned above is great but they are building a microgrid for the participants and not for anyone outside of the network. That is great for people participating but could it be extended more? Putting on a blockchain is an amazing idea and would open up sharing and tracking of the energy to possibilities that would have not been feasible before. I would suggest a few new steps to the idea.

The first step would be to identify 'low hanging fruit' of houses that need a new roof currently. These people need a roof and our blockchain would need space to place the solar tiles. It is a win win in that respect. From there a 'lease' would be signed by the home owner leasing out there roof to the blockchain and participants in the network. The new roof would be installed at cost to the blockchain. In return half the generated energy would go to the home owner for their electric needs and half would go towards the blockchain. Again another win-win. You might say wait, the blockchain just payed for the roof and only gets half the energy. I would say that is how the blockchain pays its lease to the home owner.

The second step would be what to do with the energy then? That is where other homes not yet ready for a new roof could purchase that energy. Just by opting into this blockchain, you get an opportunity for a new power source. This could be at a more competitive price than local power companies. Another option could be to sell it to local power companies. All money generated could be fed back into the network by purchasing new roofs for homes that are ready to lease. As the blockchain grows the more energy the network would generate and the more capital it would have to keep growing. This would have a large growth potential and also promote solar, renewable energies for everyone. The end goal would be to eventually get out of the business of building the roofs and into the business of shuffling energy as needed throughout the network once it becomes robust enough. This is more meant to promote and spread free energy than it would be a money making scheme. Some money will be generated but that would mostly be put back in the network to grow. All energy and money are easily tracked with it being on the blockchain. No one can worry about getting scammed or taken advantage of because it is transparent and able to be viewed by all.

Another nice feature of placing this type of network on a blockchain would be placing the coin for it on the open market that people could either invest in as they see fit or donate to the cause of growing free renewable energies. The donations would be huge at first to get the idea moving. It could be an investment that the person could get back over time given certain agreements or it could be a charitable giving to the idea. It could be crowd funded by micro donations. If everyone in america gave just $1 we would have $300 million dollars to get started. Let's say the cost of materials and installation for a roof is about $50,000. That right there would be 6,000 roofs. Hopefully that number of roofs would then start generating enough energy to sell and pay for the next iteration of roofs. It just needs a little bit of money to get started but once it does it can keep rolling from there. It would in fact grow, just like compounding in interest rates until a certain threshold. That threshold would be when the network grows to a point of being robust enough that people either get energy so cheap from everyone else or they already have a solar roof themselves. When we get there our work is done and we have successfully shifted to a renewable source, and at that point free energy for people to use.

Moving Forward

This is a theoretical proposal that I have been mulling over. A lot of details still need to be worked out. A blockchain would still need to be build and a lot of conversations with energy companies would need to be had. This is meant as a thought piece to get the initial idea out there. I would love to hear some feedback and thoughts on the idea. Is this too pie in the sky? Is it too broad? Are there any glaring holes that I am missing in all of this? Or is this just crazy enough that it could work? Let me know and thanks for reading!