Blair summed up Cogenra’s business strategy reasoning quite nicely: “People will not accept solutions to these things which mean that we can’t enjoy the benefits of modern living,” he told me. “And that is the key to unlocking the support of the people as well. People are very happy and prepared to use clean technology. But not if you tell them to do something that’s unrealistic for their life.”
To me this is one of the the two pincers that will drive the development of whatever will succeed in the solar biz: gotta let the consumer have more, better and for less (ideally both.) Just offering a green option is not enough to dominate. You get to participate, but not dominate.
In addition to the More for Less, anything new and expensive, really, really needs to land in the tax/finance/economic sweet-spot. I think Solar Hybrids are headed in the right direction as far as the technology supplying more for less (point one.) But the new, sophisticated finance approaches and better, more thoughtful and complete Levelised Cost of Energy calculations are coming along as well. That is not a simple matter and will, if we do it right, help to point out where the real value is. Finance, broadly conceived, is, I believe the second pincer - pressing us forward. It might be low-cost natural gas, low-cost flat plate collectors or even low interest rates driving money away from other investment vehicles an into energy hedging investments.
(Most of the finance sophistication is being soaked up into the utility-scale project teams and into the Power Purchase Agreements providers so they can figure out how to profit and how to communicate their offer to customers.)
This pair of forces can work together. The desire for "more goods for less money" can move people to new behavior (a hard thing - people are hardwired to avoid making a lot of changes and decisions when staying pat is tolerable) but the new behavior has to be easily understood and well presented. Learning how to do that sales job is happening all over the place. Like SunRun, Solar City etc... more on them soon.
Maybe the next thing to talk about is the most famous hybrid: the Toyota Prius...
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