The global solar energy industry has begun to demonstrate an exponential growth rate and large-scale commercial conglomerates including Tesla and Ikea have started to integrate solar energy-based services as a part of their future plans.
Months after Tesla announced the pre-sale and the completed development of Solar Roofs, which was covered in-depth on NewsBTC, Ikea announced that it has begun to officially sell solar panels in its stores and locations within the UK Sources including The Verge announced that Ikea entered into a strategic partnership with Solarcentury to supply its stores with solar panels and storage systems.
Interestingly, Ikea is not only offering solar panels to its UK consumers and homeowners. In partnership with Solarcentury, the company is also selling solar battery storage units, which homeowners can use to store surplus solar energy produced during the day.
Susannah Wood, head of residential solar at Solarcentury, said in a statement:
“We’re committed to helping homeowners reap the benefits of going solar and our business partnership with Ikea is a significant step forwards for the renewable energy industry. The cost of solar installations has dropped considerably in recent years and is in fact 100 times cheaper than it was 35 years ago.”
More to that, Ikea has revealed that the integration of solar panels could reduce electricity bills and energy costs of households by up to 75 percent. Considering that a three bedroom house in the UK brings in a $150 electricity bill on average, a 75 percent deduction on electricity bills could result in big savings for households.
In addition to reducing existing electricity bills, with the solar battery units developed by Solarcentury, homeowners can also store solar energy and distribute surplus energy to individuals, households and businesses that may be in need of energy. In such as a case, blockchain-based decentralized grid operators and system providers such as MyBit will be proven effective and practical, as it would allow homeowners to distribute solar energy stored in solar battery storage units and become incentivized with crypto tokens pegged to the Ethereum network.
“MyBit enables the crowdfunding of revenue generating machines (IoT Assets). So anyone can buy a percentage stake in a device that generates revenue and in return receive a portion of revenue the machine produces. This inverts the financing model and revenue flow to create a more scalable and democratic model which unlocks hundreds of billions of dollars in investment opportunities previously reserved for large centralized institutions to the average person,” said MyBit.
The MyBit development team, which already has raised nearly $900,000 in capital through an initial coin offering (ICO) to develop an Ethereum blockchain-based decentralized grid operator and energy distribution platform, aims to create an infrastructure for individuals such as homeowners and large businesses to distribute and receive solar energy efficiently, with less costs and intermediaries.
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