Solar Energy Potential according to NREL

Residential solar has massive potential, but consumers who want to support the growth of renewable energy face a complicated series of hurdles to jump over. Government incentive programs are often geared towards larger installations, tracking systems only monitor wholesale transactions, and it’s simply not cost effective for individual prosumers to apply for the licences and tracking accounts necessary to participate in the system. In states that allow residential prosumers to earn SRECs, sellers normally have to go through a middleman that charges high fees. At Swytch we’re working on a solution that should work for governments, producers, and consumers. With our blockchain technology, prosumers will have immutable proof that they’ve produced renewable energy, and the Swytch Proof-of-Production network provides validation through estimators and reputational staking. This doesn’t cut the red tape, it shreds it. Making renewable energy data cheap to capture and confirm opens up residential producers to participate as if they’re part of a larger organization, because with the Swytch network they are.

Courtesy of Solar City

What sort of market are we looking to provide incentives for? A huge one. According to this study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, California could use rooftop solar to offset 74% of its energy needs, New England states could offset 45% due to lower consumption even though their solar potential is poor compared to states in the south and west. Florida could offset 47% of its consumption even though it has a much higher average consumption than the US as a whole. Overall, small buildings (less than 5000 sqft) could generate 926 TWh per year of renewable solar, which beats out the 506 TWh potential of medium and large buildings. Swytch plans to work with residential customers along with small businesses and larger corporate clients to make sure they’re getting the most out of their renewable energy installations.

Courtesy of NREL

The mechanism that has enabled renewable energy to experience widespread adoption on an industrial scale in the US is the Renewable Energy Certificate. A REC is given out when a renewable energy source such as wind, geothermal, waves, or solar produces a Megawatt-hour (MWh) of energy. States require energy producers to meet certain goals, differing from state to state, to get a certain amount of their power from renewable sources, and this is called their Renewable Portfolio Standard. Large corporations and government agencies are also in the market for RECs; the former largely for CSR purposes and the latter because of executive mandates requiring them to source a certain percentage of their energy consumption from renewable sources.



Swytch is driven to help put renewable energy production on top of every residential and commercial building that is suitable. We’re going to do this by adding a multi-pronged benefit to the individual home and business owner who becomes a part of our network. Swytch works by using smart meters that turn power arrays into a node on our network. For a homeowner, becoming a node means that the renewable energy they produce is now trackable and verified in a trustless blockchain that is extremely tamper-resistant using our Proof-of-Production model. With our PoP method of minting new Swytch tokens, residential arrays will be able to track the data they need to claim RECs, or they can claim Swytch tokens that can be used for a variety of utility purposes that we’ll elaborate more on in the near future.

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Sources:

National Renewable Energy Laboratory- Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Technical Potential in the United States

Energy.gov — Solar Energy Potential Map

Solar City Blog- Growth Potential of Rooftop Solar in America