This Startup Aims to Be the Airbnb of Renewable Energy Sharing
We like the sharing community, right? Remember that trip to Barcelona and that nice Airbnb you stayed at? That all worked out. The Uber Pool you took last Thursday night saved you some money.
Now, (and get ready for this), what if you applied the principles of the sharing community to energy? In the future (a time beyond right now), we might be able to buy energy directly from our neighbors, Airbnb-fashion.
Dutch startup Vandebron has already set up a site where consumers can buy electricity from independent producers, such as farms with wind turbines. That’s great for the Dutch—they’re known for their windmills—but the implementation of energy sharing is still pretty rare.
From a global warming/saving-the-planet perspective, we need to rid our fossil fuels consumption and adopt more renewable resources to produce less emissions.
We’re good with that, right?
So, what will it take to turn household renewable energy sharing into a reality within this decade?
Fuergy, a Slovakian startup, has a mission to make renewables effective and affordable to everyone—via an AI-powered device that helps users optimize energy consumption and maximize energy efficiency of renewables.
The premise is: if you have solar panels that produce more energy than you can consume/store, instead of selling the energy back to the grid, you can sell it to members of your community, such as schools and hospitals. As a consumer, by eliminating high processing fees, you can earn more from your energy. You can also enable institutions to buy your green energy at a lower price than purchasing it from the main grid.
