1. Can you share some insights into the technological advancements that SunMoney has made in the field of renewable energy, particularly in solar power?
Z: Well, its an ever moving market and with ever-developing technologies. We always try to integrate the best available tech into our solar power plants. These power plants are built with live monitoring of the input and the output of the plants, which helps us to know from remote location and support it. Because these solar power plants are in diverse geography, so we cannot oversee them, there is no one standing next to the park. That’s kind of the basis of technology these days.
Of course, SunMoney is experimenting with storage capacity, which is the next big thing in the renewable energy market. These storage solutions available in the market are pretty expensive for now, which are good. That is because, what it has to do is not just hold the energy or electricity for a couple of hours, but for longer days or weeks.
So as a company, SunMoney is also experimenting with storage providers now, which will be the good ones to integrate into our system. But the electricity market is in the toddler stage. There are no real standards, where no one knows which would be the best solution.
So we’re looking at that market and experimenting with solutions very closely, we’re piloting it. And also, I think one of the advancements technologically we made that our business model is that we build or buy solar power plants and we let people to buy into that.
And we maintain and support the parks and we sell the electricity on our client’s behalf, and then they get the revenues every month. So two years ago, we started to do that, not just in the real financial world, but also on blockchain and tokenized solar power plants for blockchain. That is our project is called SDPN, and that’s a huge advancement. SunMoney was the first to actually do this in the world, to tokenize real the word money-making, renewable energy assets for people.
So it’s a big advancement for us because it makes our solutions more accessible and therefore makes renewable energy investments more accessible for people living all around the world, which is very important for us because we are a global company now present in 60 countries.
And there is a third advancement I would talk about here, which is not renewable energy, but something which connects to the green industry or the environment and friendly industry and change for a better world that we invested heavily into a recycling solution. And it’s a very specialized recycling solution. It is a zero-emission tire recycling solution we call Reson and works on renewable energy. This machine is actually capable to recycle dumped tires of any kind, like car tires, airplane tires, agricultural machine tires, and all that, even military tires, with zero emissions.
So without any pollution, which was impossible for a long, long time because recycling these tires is a very polluting process otherwise. And this machine is capable of doing from those tire dumps, which are everywhere in the world, like hundreds of thousands, even millions of tires done the landfill, capable to recycle them or renewable energy without emissions and make very valuable raw material out of it, which could be used to manufacture, which could be used to even to make energy through pyroleasis. So if you put this raw material into a pyroleasis machine, then you get oil and gas at the end.
Clients are queuing up governments and big companies from, I would say, all over the world to buy these machines, because this is a very actual problem for the world with the tire dumps, with the car tires dumping up. SunMoney sees this is a game changer, and we could make this industry way better and way less polluting. Tire is responsible for almost 10% of the particles in our oceans, seas, and rivers, and almost 10% of the air pollution.
It’s a big chunk we could solve, and I’m very happy and enthusiastic about this, that it’s something which can make the world better on the other side.
2. Can you share your thoughts on the role of AI in managing and optimizing energy production and consumption at SunMoney?
Z: AI, of course, is everywhere, even today, though it’s a very young thing and it’s a bit out of control in some areas. In terms of energy management, it has some requirements that we could use this to its full extent. I’ll give you a small example, and then I will tell you the big picture in this, where AI is in your home and your smart home devices. These smart home devices. So if you put these on AI and the right AI, then you can optimize your energy usage that you don’t waste energy. A couple of very simple examples is that it could manage if you are not using a room, but it’s heated or air-conditioned or lights are on, it will know it and it will switch it off.
And of course, that would save a lot of money, even with water, that it could stop the water flowing if you are not. So that’s the house, our home as AI for energy optimization and energy management. The big picture revolves around smart grids, and smart grid is everybody’s dream. It’s very rare now in the world because it costs a lot to take the electricity grid and rebuild it as a smart grid, build the hubs, build the system behind it.
AI will be capable of saving billions and billions of dollars. So, in SunMoney, we are talking about a week in terms of energy, because they can regulate where the energy should go, where it’s needed. So the electricity will not be wasted because electricity is wasted every day in these grids because there are endpoints in the grids and it tries to go there. And that’s it, simple as that. AI would know where to direct electricity, where to direct more electricity, which part of the city needs less. And also regulate the input from the renewables with, of course, batteries, could regulate those inputs and from other traditional power plants and also household systems, household renewable systems.
So the energy flow would be in two directions. And imagine if a super-calculator, which learned how to regulate energy would be on top of this, that it would be optimized to 100% usage of what’s in the grid at one given moment.
Smart grid is the prerequisite of peer-to-peer electricity sales. It would change not just the efficiency of electricity consuming, providing, electricity making or generation, but also would change the market, the market dynamics, the platform, the financials in the electricity market would make it really one of the number one markets you want to put your money in and markets you want to put your money in.
3. How would you evaluate SunMoney’s performance in terms of return on technology investments?
Z: Basically, if we are talking about return on investment, what SunMoney good at is, we cherry pick the market and we try to get the best locations with the best returns for our solar power plants with the best contracts, best partners. And we are looking now beyond Central Eastern Europe, which has been the forefront of renewable energy investments because of the great tax and incentive environment and the long contracts with state electricity providers.
But SunMoney is looking at other geographies now, where we can get the same level of geopolitical, like low risk geopolitical areas where there are state contracts and guaranteed good financing, good long term price for intake of electricity.
For some people who invest in high frequency markets, day trading, forex, crypto, coin trading, renewable energy seems to be a boring business. But there is a huge difference between the impact, the frequency impact investing and renewable energy investing.
But the good thing in renewable energy investing, and I have this great example, which kind of became a proverb now around us when I said this at the conference, that the high impact frequency, day trading, all that investing, or stock market investing, is like a racehorse. You bet on something, it will run, and maybe it will bring on big, like 100 times, 1000 times of what you’ve invested. Same with betting on a coin. In the crypto world, it can bring in 10,000 times what you invested. So compared to that, solar and renewable is the slow moving camel caravan through the desert. It’s you invest, you bet on that camel caravan, it will slowly but surely bring in the yields.
And if you invest, you put your money in the right project, that investment can bring you from eight to like 16% per year per annum. The electricity demand is always growing every year and is growing exponentially these last couple of years. SunMoney can provide that on the long run that you will have a sure revenue every year from solar power.
4. What are some technological advancements that you foresee in the renewable energy sector in the next five years?
Z: Well, in the next five years, I think it’s battery. It’s going to be about battery technology, because that is a huge roadblock for other technological investments or advancements. I think the storage capacity attached to power plants, namely solar power plants, is a huge, huge door to a lot of things happening on the market. And even AI’s integration would be really starting to pick up if there is a good storage solution.
I think with all the developments on the EV, the electric vehicle side, and all that, this has to be in the next five years. Because there are more and more innovations coming up on the battery market. I hope that some cities in the next five years, rich cities will start to adopt smart grid and start to retrofit their grids to become smart grids and start to use energy optimization to some level. That’s a huge plus for planet Earth and for, of course, money-wise, as I I told you.
So I think the smart grid adoption will pick up in the next five years. And if we look at the Saudi, the KSA super project, it is planned with that in mind and are built as smart grid projects. And so all countries, which are starting to build or extend cities will have that in mind and have the money, of course, to do that, to integrate something like that.
There is the dream of electricity transportation, which still are also in baby shoes, as we say. Basically, this would be like oil. You could pump it into a ship and it would take it to somewhere like gigawatts of electricity to somewhere where there is need. This , in some countries, like China, is already experimenting with building solar power plant in space, which is an amazing project.
It looks like sci-fi, but I think it has relevance. If they can get that electricity down to Earth, that will be just amazing. So these are all in the works. I think AI adoption, household AI adoption will be also happening for energy optimization. That’s going to be quick.
I think India is a superpower. It’s undeniable force of nature now. I think India does all the work the world needs. I see a lot happening and I’m able to understand, okay, this is what we all foresee. SunMoney is actually looking at India as maybe a new field for our operations because the government is very much pro-renewables now. It’s the desert region in South East, which is now designated as the biggest onshore solar projects are there.
It’s really cool because it’s a big country with a lot of ambition and a lot of money and workforce. And now India is using its workforce and talent to build India, not other countries as decades before. SunMoney i looking at India as one of our future markets. It’s hard to find the right insertion point for us, but we are actually very keen on exploring the market and even get into a solar project there or a recycling project there.
The interview is continued to another part, click here to read.
