Despite its popularity, the nature of solar energy is highly uncertain and weather dependent, affecting the business viability and investment of solar energy generation, especially for household users. To stabilize the income from solar energy generation, there have been limited traditional options, such as using energy storage to pool excessive solar energy in off-peak periods or financial derivatives from future markets to hedge energy prices. In this paper, we explore a novel idea of "parametric solar energy insurance", by which solar panel owners can insure their solar energy generation based on a verifiable geographically specific index (surface solar irradiation). Parametric solar energy insurance offers opportunities of financial subsidies for insufficient solar energy generation and amortizes the fluctuations of renewable energy generation geographically. Furthermore, we propose to leverage blockchain and remote sensing (satellite imagery) to provide a publicly verifiable platform for solar energy insurance, which not only automates the underwriting and claims of a solar energy insurance policy, but also improves its accountability and transparency. We utilize the state-of-the-art succinct zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARK) to realize privacy-preserving blockchain-based solar energy insurance on real-world permissionless blockchain platform Ethereum.

翻译：尽管太阳能备受青睐，但其高度不确定性和对天气的依赖性严重影响了太阳能发电的商业可行性及投资意愿，尤其对家庭用户而言。为稳定太阳能发电收入，传统方案有限，如利用储能系统在非高峰时段储存多余电能，或通过金融衍生品对冲能源价格风险。本文探索了一种名为"参数化太阳能保险"的创新理念，使太阳能板所有者能够依据可验证的地理特定指数（地表太阳辐照量）为其发电量投保。参数化太阳能保险既能为发电不足提供经济补偿，又可在地域上平抑可再生能源发电的波动性。我们进一步提出利用区块链与遥感技术（卫星影像）构建公开可验证的太阳能保险平台，该平台不仅可实现保单核保与理赔的自动化，更能提升其问责性与透明度。我们采用先进的简洁零知识证明（zk-SNARK）技术，在现实世界的无许可区块链平台以太坊上实现了保护隐私的区块链太阳能保险系统。