The recent announcement by Tesla Motors that their patents would be released as open source has put the spotlight on open source and open standards within the renewable energy industry. Open source and open standards play a huge role in the computer and Internet industries. Just think of the impact of the open source architecture of the PC and the open communication standard HTML. Google built its business on the open source Apache server and the open source Android operating system. In the solar industry, Tioga Energy released an open source solar power purchase agreement. Could open standards and open source benefit the shared and community solar industry segment?