We see a lot of news about solar energy production becoming more viable, cheaper and impactful on energy production, so what is the problem?
The problem is its still not nearly enough, the energy requirements of the world are increasing constantly, we see great examples of this in the cryptocurrency world where Bitcoin mining uses the power budget of entire countries now. This power usage will only increase throughout the whole of society, worldwide.
We can move to a future powered by renewables, and not just the first world, but the develping world too: If you live in a remote village, far from power networks, how do you get energy? Its quite common in these instances to burn kerosene, its expensive, dangerous (both a fire hazard and toxicity) and you have to go and get it from the market and bring it home. If people are living like this, they can never escape from their situation, they simply dont have a method; perhaps some are very happy, but others may want to do their homework after dark to educate themselves, or run a small radio or TV to get news from around the world, even charge a mobile phone perhaps.
Many people will say solar power isnt reliable; when the sun goes down it stops producing, well thats true, but energy storage is not new, most nuclear power plants have masses of energy storage because you cant just turn them off, so they need energy buffers for when the grid is at high capacity. We are seeing huge advances in energy storage now, driven by electric vehicle advances.
Many people will say its not feasible to have fields full of solar panels, but you really dont need that many, if EVERY roof in the world had solar PV panels, there would not be an energy problem.
Also, just step back a moment and think about power networks as they operate today, some large state or corporate entity, produces power and pushes it to you, they decide how much you pay and they decide how they produce it; you the consumer perform the LOWEST form of participation in the energy market possible, you just consume. Is that really you, just a hungry consumer, sucking up resources? You dont want to give anything back, you just want to sit passively doing what you are told to do? Perhaps you are into crypto and want to see decentralization, well is your energy supply, and the energy supply of your favourite blockchain coming from decentralized resources? No it isnt really. Yes, it might be coming from different power companies around the world, but you are still reliant on the old world order to power your blockchain.
You are reading this on an electronic device now, what method was used to produce that energy, do you know? If you are a crypto miner like i am, how much are you impacting the world for your slice of crypto heaven? If you are really serious about your energy sources, you may have a contract to supply from renewable resources only, or like me have a solar PV system installed on your roof:
But lets be honest this isnt for everyone, perhaps you live in rented accommodation, perhaps you live in the African bush, perhaps you are a world traveller with no fixed place to call home.
SolarCoin can help, its a cryptocurrency that has one sole purpose (beyond pure currency); to act as an incentive to move the whole world, that means EVERYONE towards a clean energy future. If you have a solar panel, it doesnt matter where you are, you will be given 1 free SolarCoin for every 1 MegaWattHour of energy you make.
If this incentive is going to work, it needs to be valuable enough to act as a reward that will go some reasonable way to offsetting the costs of installing solar PV systems, the SolarCoin community thinks this will begin to occur in the 10-20USD per SLR price range.
BE BOLD show your support for decentralized energy production, be part of the new wave taking control of how your energy is produced. You can buy SLR on Bittrex or Lykke, so go on I dare you to buy SLR and hodl it. It only needs to be a small amount, take your crypto wealth and do something wonderful with it, you will probably make a good return too.