For many years, renewable energy was out of bounds for entrepreneurs. The costs of starting up were high, and the actual products themselves couldn’t come anywhere near competing with conventional forms of power generation. But over the years, we saw something interesting: the price of renewable energy fell almost inexorably – and it’s still falling today. This means that it’s now a viable industry for entrepreneurs to get involved in since consumers are ready and willing to pay the prices that things like solar panels can be supplied to the market.
Here’s a bunch of the top business opportunities available right now in the burgeoning energy industry.
Solar Panel Sales And Distribution
Solar energy is growing, and it’s growing fast. In some area of the UK, the majority of the additional power generation that came online this year came from renewable energy sources. This means that there has been a boom in demand for solar energy at the household level. Millions of people are waking up and seeing how they can benefit from having solar panels on their roofs, saving them money on regular electricity bills over the long run. That means that there’s a big demand for people who can sell and distribute these panels to the people that want them.
Entrepreneurs who want to get into this industry can do so quite easily. It’s just a question of getting some form of global renewable energy training, and making the necessary links with manufacturers in the Far East and the USA.
Wind Energy Installation
If you happen to live in a country with a lot of wind, like the UK, there’s also going to be a lot of demand for wind energy. At higher latitudes, in places like Scandinavia, Canada and Britain, wind has the advantage over solar, since the amount of solar insolation that hits the ground in places further from the equator is small. Wind energy companies tend to start off small, installing a single small turbine at a farm or in a rural community. But they can grow quickly, so long as they can find the right contracts and get people interesting in what they’re doing.
Power Storage
One of the most exciting areas for renewable entrepreneurs is in the field of energy storage. For years, people have criticised green energy for the fact that it’s intermittent and can’t be stored. The wind only blows, and the sun only shines some of the time – but electricity is demanded around the clock. This argument led to the idea that all countries needed “base power” generation by a coal or nuclear power plant. But battery storage promises to change all that. One of the cool things that’s going to happen over the next few years is that the price of storage is going to fall to the point where it’s worthwhile individual power companies and consumers buying them for themselves. With Elon Musk’s Gigafactory coming online in the next few months, battery prices are expected to plummet, far below today’s levels. And when that happens, there will be a lot of demand for firms and businesses that and install them.