So yeah… I have literally been wanting to type this for years, and I’m finally doing it. There is not THAT much concrete I can announce, but there are plans..real plans..and actual actions…
I’m a big renewable energy fan. If you follow this blog a lot you might know that I have solar panels in my garden (2.1kwp) and also have put some solar panels on a local school (as a charitable thing). I’m a big fan. I also have over the years invested in peer-to-peer networks that build solar farms, through sites like the westmill solar farm co-op and abundance. I got quite into it. It *can* be a reasonably good (and very safe & predictable) investment. I’ve wanted to do a lot more for years.
Luckily, I seem to be unusually good at running an indie game company, and also unusually good at investing the profits, which means I’m finally in a position to fulfill a very long-held dream and actually start a little solar energy company, which I have unimaginatively called Positech Energy. Its a real proper registered company, and everything! It even has an incredibly crap placeholder website that has almost zero content!
So…whats this for then?
I’m a big fan of solar farms, and have read about them a ridiculous amount., I always wanted to build one, not just invest in one someone else built. Frankly investment is easy, and lazy. You just read some financial documents and click a button. You could do it in the bath ffs. Its not the hard work. The hard work is the actual nitty gritty of where the tires hit the road and you have to talk to planning people, and local government, and solar installers, and energy companies, and regulators, and energy distribution companies… and about a bazillion other pieces of bureaucracy… This is what puts people off, and its PRECISELY because this is so awkward, and difficult, and stressful that I decided to do it…
I am aware of just how easy it is to be a ‘slacktivist’. Someone whose idea of activism is using a hashtag, or adding an emoji to their twitter profile. Thats all well and good, but its not even 0.000001% as effective as getting off your ass and physically making a change. I’ve already insulated my house to oblivion, put solar in the garden, bought an electric car, switched to a green electricity provider, and so on. I’ve done the green-investment thing, but really, its only one step up from slactivism. I haven’t really made an impact on the issue I care about: climate change and green energy’s part in all that.
So… I’m planning on building a solar farm. We have a potential site (actually potential site #2 now…#1 fell through), and are in the haggling stages. Its nowhere near me. I wont be able to nip out there to stare at it daily. It is in the UK though. Also… its kinda MASSIVE from the POV of me, but tiny from the POV of the big energy companies.
It turns out that roughly 1MWp is the size we are aiming for. So a peak output of about 1MW, which is quite a lot. over a year you generate maybe 1,000 MW(ish). For comparison to fill (from empty) a high performance Tesla model S is 100kw, so thats 10,000 cars recharged per year. Its also a lot of space, and solar panels. Thousands of them in fact.
The plan is also to incorporate some energy storage (effectively a shipping container or two full of lithium ion batteries wired into the grid). This allows you to get a better price for the power, as you can effectively ‘cache’ it for when its a good time to sell, and also you can sell ‘grid stabilization’ where you allow the national energy grid to rent space in your battery to dump excess power and then slurp it back a few minutes (or seconds) later if they are having trouble maintaining grid frequency. There is an open(ish) market for these kind of services.
This is going to take MONTHS to have any progress whatsoever. There will be a lot of staring at paperwork, and spreadsheets, and emails, and phonecalls/zoom meetings and bureaucracy and nonsense. I’ve already been driven MAD by the insane demands of simply opening a second bank account in a new company name… But hopefully it will be worth it.
Because I love stats, and the free market, and sharing, I intend to be very open about the technical and financial side once we actually have contracts signed. That might be a while…
(BTW I am still working 40+ hours/week on indie games with Democracy 4. This crazy adventure is my hobby. Its not a big time commitment)