Power Purchase Agreement
= The solar PPA enabled users to purchase solar-generated electricity as they consumed it, with no upfront cost of building a solar plant.
Discussion
Paul Lightfoot, CEO of hydrophonic greenhouse producer BrightFarms:
“To truly shake things up in a market, innovations also need new business models as well as what Christensen calls “value networks” – new supply chains, channels to market and so on. Without such support, established leaders can squash or co-opt new players, sometimes killing or at least sidelining their innovations along with them. Sometimes it can take a long time for new business models and value networks to evolve in support of a “new” technology.”
Take “solar power. The sun as a source of energy dates back to ancient times, of course. But its first potentially mainstream applications – most notably a satellite powered by a small solar cell – emerged in the 1950s.
Solar technology research and development has continued over the last 50-plus years, but solar languished as a commercially viable alternative to fossil fuel-based sources of energy because of low oil prices.
We did not make significant progress in the deployment of solar until it made business and economic sense. As the price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity rose, the price of solar in many markets suddenly made economic sense. Even then, it took a business model innovation – the power purchase agreement (PPA) – for rooftop solar to take off. The solar PPA enabled users to purchase solar-generated electricity as they consumed it, with no upfront cost of building a solar plant.” (http://gigaom.com/cleantech/how-a-new-business-model-could-revolutionize-fresh-food/)