Electricity sees the power of the blockchain and several companies in the sector and several technology companies join in a non-profit association to implement the blockchain in the energy sector.

While in Spain we are at odds with the issue of renewable energies, taxes on the sun and others, in the rest of the world they are going at the same pace and that is that a group of energy companies and technology developers have come together to set up a project that will use distributed ledger technology, colloquially known as blockchain, for the energy sector. The Energy Web Foundation (EWF) will be a non-profit conglomerate whose mission is to develop blockchain-type applications for the energy industry, making it commercially viable.

SP Group, Centrica, Elia, Engie, Sempra Energy, TWL, Royal Dutch Sell, Statoil ASA, Stedin and Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) have joined, who in a first round of financing have raised 2.5 million dollars to put into the project is running. Together with these energy companies, we find a non-profit organization called Rocky Mountain Institute, whose mission is to optimize the use of resources in an efficient and renewable way. The technological group behind this blockchain platform is Grid Singularity, which has specialized in creating applications under this technology for the energy sector, in addition to smart contracts.

The press release explains that the blockchain has high potential to reduce operating costs in gas and electricity services. This system can allow devices such as batteries, electric cars, photovoltaic panels and water heaters, to connect and allow transactions to be carried out with each other or with a specific provider, as well as to report data more effectively.

The main challenge for the electricity sector in the XNUMXst century is to integrate more renewable energy effectively and at low cost in a context of decreasing demand. The only way to know how we will do this is by automating the demand, allowing to add more participants to the network. This means automating distribution and markets. We are excited about the potential of blockchain technology as an enabler to realize that vision. Hervé Touati, Director of RMI and President of EWF

This platform has received the name of Kovan, which will be open source and specialized in the energy sector, being executed and maintained by the EWF conglomerate. Testing should begin shortly based on a 'new consensus algorithm, which has the ability to process a thousand transactions per second and which is being used by several blockchain startups,' says Ewald Hesse, executive of Grid Singularity.

The vice president of the foundation has commented that the blockchain allows interconnected operation with other similar platforms thanks to the Polkadot design, provided by Parity Technologies. According to the aforementioned company, the protocol allows the creation of a private blockchain without sacrificing the general consensus of the Ethereum blockchain (all roads lead to Rome), which allows it to operate with other private and public protocols.

WE TALK ABOUT ETHEREUM, THE VIRTUAL CURRENCY OF THE MOMENT AND FOR WHICH BANKS AND COUNTRIES SUSPIRE

More work is being done on proof of concept and studying other use cases and applications, in the interest of cooperating with legal regulators and other technology companies as well. We recall that last month it became known that the company TenneT, one of the main electricity products and distributors in Europe, together with IBM, wanted to deploy a blockchain platform for the optimization of energy transmission and distribution in the Netherlands and Germany, allowing Users can rent energy storage space until another user requires it, through a smart contract, and through a battery network, transporting cleanly generated energy to more places.

Source: CryptoNews