The stock exchange of sunlight

The Sun Exchange
South Africa (Cape Town)

The sun is free, so why have the benefits of solar energy been inaccessible – until now? 

In South Africa, there is a lack of access to financing for solar power installations for small and often remote facilities, like schools, clinics and farms: “Southern Africa’s power systems are undercapitalised and electrical power is expensive,” says Abe Cambridge, founder of The Sun Exchange (SUNEX). “For many, the power supply is intermittent or entirely absent. Solar power solves all of these problems.”

SUNEX is his peer-to-peer lending platform which connects people wanting to invest in solar energy with people who want to access it – a bit like the stock exchange, but with sunlight.

The primary obstacles standing in the way of widespread adoption of solar power are the high startup costs associated with equipment and setup of installations and the difficulty accessing viable financing for these installations. SUNEX applies crowdfunding and low-cost digital currencies – such as Bitcoin – to finance them.

At the core of the technology are smart meters (electronic devices that record consumption of electric energy and communicate that information for monitoring and billing) that write directly to a smart contract on the Ethereum block-chain. The result is a totally autonomous, secure and low cost revenue payment system. On the investor side, The Sun Exchange harvests money from the sun, offering returns to lenders. It really does create money from electricity.

“Our mission is to enable individuals to finance the infrastructure they want to see in the world,” Cambridge tells us. “Consider this…. how many people do you know that are unhappy with fracking or concerned about nuclear energy? Those people have a right to be frustrated. These are centralised energy sources for which individuals have little or no say or control into whether they get deployed or not.” Solar energy, on the other hand, is totally scalable, democratic energy. “Start financing democratic energy with democratic money and then we have got total control on our future,” he adds. 

Watch the solar-powered money in action:

Written by

Michelle Hardiman, Community Manager, Atlas of the Future (02 June 2016)

Project leader

Abe Cambridge, CEO, The Sun Exchange

Support the Atlas

We want the Atlas of the Future media platform and our event to be available to everybody, everywhere for free – always. Fancy helping us spread stories of hope and optimism to create a better tomorrow? For those able, we'd be grateful for any donation.

Creative Commons License

Comments

 

Take me somewhere
Close
Take me somewhere
Close
Data Protection Act: LOPD.
In compliance with Organic Law 15/1999, of 13 of December, on Personal Data Protection, and the development of Rules of Procedure, approved by Royal Decree 1720/2007, of 21 of December, Atlas of the Future subscribers may be required to provide Personal Data, which will be included in a file owned by Democratising The Future Society SL. Such file is duly incorporated in the Spanish Data Protection Agency and protected in compliance with the security measures established in the applicable legislation. Subscribers may exercise, at any time, their rights of access, rectification, cancellation and/or opposition regarding their Personal Data. The subscriber shall notice their will, either under written form addressed to Democratising The Future Society SL, Ref. LOPD, Calabria, 10 6-3 08015 - Barcelona (Spain) and/or by e-mail, clicking here. Also, the subscriber shall communicate Atlas of the Future any modifications of their Personal Data stored, so that the information stored by Atlas of the Future remains at all times updated and error-free.
Close
Get World-changing projects and news in your inbox weekly.