Solar Energy & Windpower Software
(Feb-July 2001)
Parallel to providing e-business services, my interest in the renewable energies, especially for solar energy and windpower has never been ebbed off.
  • Once I fancied to provide an Internet-based platform where people can select their preferred software, view them, order a free demo, purchase online and even make design online.
  • And I wanted the platform will become one of the most comprehensive one, whether they are universities, r&d organizations, owners, investors, operators, governments, industry associations, public media, manufacturers, inspection and control institutes, traders, retailers or wholesalers in the solar energy and windpower sectors.
  • I will also collect all kinds of software for solar heating, PV, training, education, weather data, radiation, passive building, wind measurement and site evaluation, windturbine design, windturbine component optimization and design, windpark operation, wind atlas etc.

 
In fact, I have nearly collected information about software and developers in full and completeness.
 
Once the preparatory work was done, the next step was to contact all these developers to discuss with them about cooperation schemes.
 
I talked about marketing, about technical support, about localization and everything.
 
An obvious obstacle was clear: unconformity of weather data and characteristic data of equipment in case of solar energy. ISVs have to amend weather and radiation data of the chinese climate. Solar software developers have to supplement chinese brand data. And also wind atlas of the chinese landscape shall be used instead of european or American ones. Further, a localization version is absolutely necessary to promote in from of the chinese buyers.
 
However, either they were lack of making any changes or they were responding too slowly, it was apparently impossible to work out a timetable of a china marketing plan.
 
On the other hand, the software markets both for the solar and the windpower markets are all too small. For example, the Windpower engineering software market: the largest ISV has sold only some 700 sets since its beginning of about 30 years ago, and each costs about Euro 800. If the commission was 20%, how much can I earn from selling these software ? Even the pre- and after-sales are calculated, the total market volume is still to small.
 
It was a painful decision to stop the business, an area where I have been engaging for years.