Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I began working on SRECTrade in late 2008. Originally, we thought we were building a transaction platform for people who owned solar renewable energy certificates or SRECs and needed a way to sell them. Build it, and they will come! Or so we had hoped.

Though the name has stayed the same, over the past 3 years, we’ve evolved into a company focused on servicing the solar installation industry. Our first step was to provide registration and SREC management services to customers who were new to the process. From that service emerged partnerships with solar installation companies who were looking for a turn-key 3rd party solution to help their customers manage their SRECs.

Today, that technology has developed into the most sophisticated online platform for managing SRECs in existence. More importantly, it also takes the process a step further by allowing our partners to access an aggregated view of their customers’ accounts. Today, we boast over 250 partners in 15 states, 5,000 customers and over 35 MW of solar systems enrolled in this program.

As our technology has become more capable, so has its usefulness to other organizations. Most notably, utility companies putting together customer-friendly programs for acquiring SRECs in long-term contracts. The first of what we hope will be many such relationships will be with the state of Delaware’s Sustainable Energy Utility and Delmarva Power. We also will be providing similar custom programs for other solar organizations looking to achieve scale while managing SREC needs.

SRECs are a new phenomenon, but they are at the forefront of what I would consider the early stages of the maturation of the solar industry. That said, we should all hope that their usefulness will decline over time as solar reaches grid parity. Knowing this, we have invested much of our free time and resources in growing our business beyond the SREC markets in search of what will be the 4th, 5th or 6th iteration of our business model.

Our first foray beyond SRECs has been into the convoluted world of equipment procurement. Through interactions with our partners, we realized that many lacked the scale to get the attention of the large manufacturers and distributors, particularly US-based manufacturers. Leveraging our industry relationships and focusing on selling kitted solutions, we’ve been able to set up a program that gives our installers access to more product, with better pricing and shipping terms. As that part of our business hits its stride, we’ll turn our attention to the next pain point that surfaces.

Solar is a challenging industry, but frustrations are often forgotten when we are reminded that we’re changing the world, one rooftop at a time.