At this point I see a long haul for the low price (.03 & under) as we will need to see claimant milestones, like 10k, 100k, 1mil claimants, ect before we really see people start to pay attention, & we will need still millions more before a true barter/trade system is ubiquitous around the world for SLR like it is for BTC.
Most importantly we need more claimants & more people running the wallet since this will increase the number of people deeply invested in the network and ideologies behind it. Surely that will only lead to good things for network strength and permeation!
(hope all is well with everyone, Love the enthusiasm so far as SLR is kicking a** & taking names if you ask me so lets keep this train moving along.. no room for short-minded thinking when you have a 50+ year road in your sights)
This is an excerpt from a working solarcoin economics paper I am working on.....
Currency is a form of money.
A currency is a social protocol agreed to represent value by the people participating and agreeing to the protocol. I accept Visa, MasterCard, Dollars, etc. As a protocol the value of the network of participants can be reduced and calculated per the number of nodes (participants) assuming a relatively stable flow of value across the network. Fiat works for example by booting up with a massive demand (tax settlement) and supply flow driver (govt expenditures) which pushes the network to dominance (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect network effects) in a geography. A willingness to support the protocol is enough to be part of the network from the perspective of other nodes.
Currency derives its value from 2 forms of economic utility, speculative and transactional. Speculative utility which is volatile is less interesting than growing stable transactional utility which is a mix of optional acceptance and capacity for value exchange. Below are some examples of economic networks and protocols. Some of them are currencies. Note: the value of the network below in some examples only includes the network owner and not the nodes.
Here is a link
*note: where the chart above includes "closed" networks Ebay,visa, etc. the utility/node only reflects network owner utility and not the collective utility which also accrues to participants.
https://www.zapchain.com/a/93TL8NKGHF
If this analysis of currency and economic value being a network effect holds true. then SLR gets interesting at fairly small number of claimant. and yes you are correct it needs to be easier for the solar community. Many are working on that with a mix of online wallets, direct inverter reading and partnerships with developer/installers.
If this assumption hold correct then each 1,000 claimants could add roughly $800k in total to the network utility (market cap) of SolarCoin as a value representing protocol. The SolarCoin energy credit as represented by the Generator pool of 97.5 billion coins is now worth $600m http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/market-cap-by-total-supply/ This gives SolarCoin the potential to become the largest private renewable energy program in the world in comparison to this global public summary.
Source data:https://maps.foundationcenter.org/home.php