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Cutting out the middle-man’s profit from your electricity bill – peer to peer power

  • 07-06-2016 11:44am
    #1
    Impetus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭


    A German company, Sonnen, (derived from Die Sonne, German for the sun) is rolling out a web based peer to peer green energy electricity exchange system. Eg if you have solar power or a wind turbine on your property, you can sell your surplus power over this peer-to-peer exchange – much like Skype operates for phone and video calls.

    In Ireland retail power costs about 18c or more per kWh. The wholesale cost is typically in the 3 to 5c per kWh range*. You don’t have to have PV cells on your roof or a wind turbine to buy power over this exchange, anybody can join up and buy power direct from producers. Another aspect of the disintermediation trend rolling out over the internet. Other examples of disintermediation are peer to peer lending, Amazon.com, Skype, Bitcoin and Ether, AirBnB, Uber, eBay, Etsy …..

    Watch the video on the Sonnen Community website (link below). This company also makes home battery storage systems for houses with PV cells or wind turbines – allowing them to store power. Tesla Motors also has a product for this market. Sonnen charge around EUR 6’000 for a typical energy storage battery suitable for home use. Store up power by day when there is sunlight, and discharge it over the evening/night. Or sell it over the grid to your ‘neighbours’.

    Play video:

    https://www.sonnenbatterie.de/en/sonnenCommunity

    * http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/market-pricing

    http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peertopeer-p2p-service.asp


Comments

  • #2
    Conor20
    Registered Users Posts: 265 ✭✭Conor20


    Very interesting. This would be fantastic as a way to enable further uptake of Solar PV. I wonder how this could work in Ireland? I understand that in order to do this in Ireland, the company to set it up would need to (1) register to buy power from the wholesale market in order to buy the PV generation from the seller, and (2) also register as a utility / seller of electricity in order to sell it to consumers, given that both buying and selling of electricity in Ireland is regulated. Or is there some other way to create something like this in Ireland and still have the power flowing over the public electricity grid?


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