SMA Solar Technology, a Germany-based producer of solar panels and associated support hardware and software, have signed up 260,000 new solar energy producers to receive SolarCoin (SLR) in an effort to encourage the SolarCoin ecosystem’s development, according to a press release.

SolarCoin is quite an old project, dating back to 2013. Its purpose is to incentivize green energy producers with their own cryptocurrency, with one SLR being paid out for every megawatt hour being produced with solar energy. Producers can even claim production from as far back as 2010 to be retroactively awarded SLR.

SMA are pushing the new partnership through one of their support products, the Sunny Portal, which is an online management suite for producers. SMA claim that Sunny Portal is the “world’s largest solar monitoring platform.”

 

Users already on the Sunny Portal get fast-tracked to receive tokens, without the “need to submit all the documentation typically required for registration [such as] ownership status, technical data, power generation capacity and identity.”

According to Greentechmedia.com, Saudi Arabia-based ACWA Power International have also onboarded use of SLR for new solar farms going up in South Africa and Bulgaria.

solarcoinchart.png(source: CryptoCompare)

A key point is that producers receive SLR tokens in addition to their normal (fiat) payments received, in whatever form they receive it. Although SLR’s low current market price does not offer much incentive to adopt it, its airdropped nature also presents no possible downside – and future price rises could mean new revenue streams.

Solar Usage

According to the US government’s Energy Information Administration, production of energy from solar sources comprises only 1.3% of total US energy production. Other renewables do better, however, with 7.4% coming from hydropower and 6.3% coming from wind turbine production.