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Comment by jameswilsterman | Hacker News Reader

"It baffles me why more entrepreneurs haven't realized that 87% of the energy sources we use are going to be switching to other sources in our lifetimes"

What leads you to think entrepreneurs haven't realized this? What should they be doing once they do realize it?

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My startup is in the SfunCube solar startup accelerator program[1]. So far, all of the entrepreneurs who have applied to the program are from within the solar industry (i.e. they previously worked at a solar company). Additionally, I organize the SF Cleanweb meetups[2], and we rarely see people from the normal tech companies/startups come to events to learn more about the space.

I don't really blame anyone for not realizing the huge opportunity in solar. It's not a very visible industry and used to be primarily a hardware space. Software has only come to the forefront in the last few years due to soft costs being such a huge problem[3]. If you're looking for an industry that desperately needs software and entrepreneurial talent, I'd highly recommend solar.

[1]: http://www.sfuncube.com/

[2]: http://www.meetup.com/cleanwebsf/

[3]: http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/5306.html

I'm not at all knowledgeable about the solar industry, but I'm curious: how would software reduce the "soft" costs described in that third link (NREL)? It seems to me to be a bunch of costs related to the actors involved, and I don't see how software would help with that. Also, do you have examples of such software?

Sure! My startup, UtilityAPI.com, is an example of one that is targeting customer acquisition soft costs (10% of total installed cost). When you want to write a proposal for someone thinking about going solar, you need their utility usage and billing history. Collecting that data is currently a very time consuming and painful process, so not only do you spend a lot of man-hours on it, you also lose a huge portion of your funnel at this step.

We are building software that automates that utility data collection process, so solar companies can just bake it into their online forms/apps/internal tools. We estimate we can shave 5-10% off the installed price of solar due to time savings and increased conversion. The Department of Energy agreed and recently awarded us with $25k to build SDKs for our API (with the opportunity for $100k more in May)[1].

[1]: http://catalyst.energy.gov/

Ok I see, you're saying that hidden away in the various strata in that graph are, e.g., process inefficiencies which software can eat away. I was naively looking for something that would solve many categories at once, and being an outsider I think of solar as mostly hardware (like you said). Thanks for the answer.

> solar

> not a very visible industry

Hah.

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