Back in 2008, when a couple of dads hanging out in an Auckland playground got to talking, the pair quickly realised they had some things in common.
Both were U.S. expats; both had a keen interest in the environment; both were software developers.
You don’t meet someone who shares your interests every day. Especially when those interests include an open-source public infrastructure for energy management.
Pretty soon the two had gathered a couple of solar panels, charge controllers, deep-cycle batteries, miniature PCs, and they climbed their roofs to install the gear - forgetting that their children were still at the playground. Just kidding. Over the next weeks and months they wrote the code that would become the SolarNetwork platform.
Today SolarNetwork is used by schools, corporations, governments, solar integrators, and developers in numerous apps that display and control dynamic energy flows in new and novel ways.
SolarNetwork and its founders have been recognized by awards and invitations to conferences and brainstorming sessions across the world, from the Asian Development Bank to the White House.
The SolarNetwork project began with tracking the energy produced by solar panels and collecting this data over the internet. But the goal has always been bigger than just solar panels. We want people to consider the entire energy ecosystem and all of the its elements: weather, market prices, electric vehicles, and the effects of these elements on the climate.
We still use solar to describe ourselves because the energy produced by the sun either provides or directly influences all aspects of an energy enrvironment. Network can be thought of as both the physical network provided by the internet as well as the social aspect of people sharing a common interest in energy and the environment. In this way, SolarNetwork was named.
SolarNetwork Foundation was established in 2017 to serve as a curator and promoter of the open codebase and data-driven process that comprise the SolarNetwork platform. The Foundation’s work is guided by our belief in:
We celebrate the innovations emerging from the community of developers, enthusiasts, and business leaders who share these values.
Our mission is to protect and preserve the environment by supporting energy education, and to use technology to engage people for the purposes of energy awareness, conservation, and the uptake of renewable energy sources.
Our charitable aim is to protect the environment through supporting energy education and using technology to help people understand energy conservation and renewable energy.
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