DAEDALUS: Reaching the sun with solarcoins and smart solar panels

India is now a middle income country but local electricity grids are unreliable and outages can last several

hours. We explore innovative business and financing models for rooftop solar panels and local storage which

can replace diesel generators and improve access to clean reliable energy. With reducing panel costs, feed-in-

tariffs and net metering subsides are falling. However, installations need funding and we consider how

blockchains and cryptocurrencies such as SolarCoins can reward investors or repay loans. These may also help

local enterprises securely trade solar power in new ways. A key enabler is a smart card chip added to a solar

panel which can be linked to distributed ledger technology to track large numbers of assets. They can also

prevent fraud such as diesel generated power being claimed to be renewables. We will build a test-bed at

University of Hertfordshire to demonstrate benefits of cryptocurrencies and distributed ledgers along with our

smart solar panel hardware. We use this to share technical skills and expertise with local partners in South

Asian or sub-Saharan African countries of interest to DFiD.