Disrupting the Off-Grid Market
Defined by Clayton Christensen, Disruptive Innovation disrupts an existing market through the creation of a new market. Innovation can be classified as disruptive or sustaining, though it’s not as black and white as that, as disruption itself is a process. During a presentation done in class, the following diagram was shown.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141123100030-18176179-disruptive-innovation-vs-sustaining-innovation
While this diagram provides differences between the two types of innovation, it does not explain how the process of disruption comes into play, or how type products or services can make use of both types of innovation. For example, Uber shifted to sustaining innovation through improving quality after it disrupted the taxi market. As well, the iPhone was a type of sustaining innovation until the PC markets were targeted.
Photovoltaic electricity is widely a sustaining form of innovation. However, there is an opportunity for disruptive innovation to emerge, particularly through off-grid electricity photovoltaic product development.
A relatively unexplored area, the off-grid electricity market holds a lot of potential (pun intended) for growth, even as the bulk of attention in developed countries is to power from main electrical grids. According to Adnan Z. Amin, the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) Director-General, “Access to clean and reliable electricity supply is vital for social and economic development, and off-grid renewables present a cost-effective, clean and reliable solution for electricity access in rural, peri-urban and island contexts.” However, he technologies used by off-grids communities has garnered interest from technology enthusiast as a whole.
Integrated solar in general is the direction the off-grid electricity industry is likely to take over the next several years. There is building applied photovoltaics, which is the application of solar technology after a building has been constructed, and is already reaching maturity in the market. On the other hand, building integrated photovoltaics is the inclusion of solar technology into features of the building during the design and construction processes. In 2014 there was hype about solar integrated roads, though integrating photoelectric technology into buildings will be a much more feasible business venture. The market for building-integrated photovoltaics and building applied photovoltaics is projected to grow to $2.4 billion in 2017, up from $606 million in 2012.
The Tesla Solar Roof is likely to become the first of these technologies introduced to the market. The claims about this upcoming product including lower electricity bills, an increase in property value, a reduced carbon footprint, as well as the solar roof being less expensive than a conventional roof, even before the energy savings.
There has been much laboratory development on photoelectric windows, based on the use of dye sensitized solar technology, also known as photoelectric glazing technology. Nanocrystalline dye sensitized solar cells are the third generation of solar technology, and would allow for transparent or semi-transparent windows that could provide a significant amount of electricity generation to a house or building. Just like with the Tesla Solar roof, the approach for this new type of product would be to provide an economic benefit as well as a technological one.
Do you think building-integrated photovoltaics will take off soon? What other building-integrated technologies do you think could disrupt the off-grid market?