Blog Post

Around the world, summer has once again meant record-setting heat waves. While this comes as no surprise to some, the consequences have proved startling. In Tokyo, 23,000 people were hospitalized for heat stroke in a single week in July, when temperatures consistently hit triple-digits. On July 5^th in Algeria, laborers were faced with the prospect of working in temperatures as high as 124 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here in New England, where temperatures were not so brutal (though still record-setting), power outages were one upshot of a hotter summer. However, as increased power loads challenged grid stability, one promising story has been the increased number of gigawatt hours coming online via distributed solar.

A report released last week by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., calculated that distributed solar saved New England consumers nearly $20 million in just one week. The report, which studied the first week of July—one of the summer’s hottest—estimated the total distributed solar generation during that time at 96 GWh. During peak hours, distributed solar generation reduced load by 1.6 GW.

Each year, the urgency of global warming demonstrates that we are quickly running out of time to come up with solutions—both to mitigate rising temperatures, and to answer the more concrete question of how to keep the lights on in the meantime. Investing in distributed solar energy allows us to tackle both problems at once.

Power2Peer is currently running an equity crowdfunding campaign. By investing in Power2Peer’s blockchain-enabled adaptive solar microgrid system, you can help make a global impact in the long term, while also mitigating generation costs in the short term. Both financially and ethically, such an investment provides for the future.