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Neighbors Changing the Way We Buy Power

Now customers can purchase Solar Power from their neighbor’s roof thanks to a startup company in Brooklyn, L03 Energy. They are completely changing how homeowners can buy and sell their electricity. They have created a market for clean energy. This is changing how power utility companies have been traditionally running things for a long time.

They only had one seller and a lot of buyers. Now, it is slowly being opened up to everyone to sell. Instead of selling the surplus power back on the grid they can sell power directly to each other. This will start spreading all over the US and other countries. This is changing the game with how energy has been traditionally been sold.

The markets are not where you’d think they are

L03 Energy indicated that the strongest U.S. markets for residential storage and Solar Power aren’t necessarily where one would think they might be. Most observers might expect to see robust markets in places that look good on paper. States with high solar penetration or have made visible policy or regulatory nod towards batteries, such as California and Hawaii.

In fact, that’s not where the pay-dirt has been located, at least not yet. Larger numbers of buyers exist in other locales, motivated less by incentives and economics, and more by other factors. The company also observed that, in early stages, it’s not about that (economics), as much as about early adopters…from a volume perspective, we have had early adopters across the country because people think it is cool. and also, they know that it is the right thing to do.

Those first-to-market buyers – who tend to be more “eco-forward” affluent – want energy security and independence and a truly carbon-neutral lifestyle. So (perhaps surprisingly), Utah and Nevada are leading markets (elimination of net metering in Nevada has made a better argument for solar plus storage in that state). And once they sell an initial system into a neighborhood, the chance of selling more units increases greatly. This is a result of a phenomenon known as the ‘cluster’ or ‘contagion’ effect, a dynamic that has been known for some time by sellers of solar panels and electric vehicles. People who buy cutting edge ‘cool’ products like to tell their neighbors and peers about it. And some of them follow suit, purchasing and further spreading the message. That’s basic human nature.

In other countries like Italy and the U.S., one cannot simply cut the utility out. In many cases, utility partnerships are the way to go, and other models are being developed for these markets. The industry growth greatly assists with the expansion of “neighboring solar power” in the States and the residential storage power that so many companies have to offer in an effort to produce clean energy, sustainable world.