The Emerging Mutual Dependence of Energy and Blockchain Technologies
Scott Deatherage
Expertise in Environmental, Renewable Energy, Climate Change, and Carbon Credits; Managing Member, S Deatherage Law; Chief Legal Officer, Rove Charging, LLC
Copyright Scott D. Deatherage July 29, 2018
Energy and blockchain are two technologies converging.
Energy is moving toward a more decentralized system—distributed energy and distributed storage--putting pressure on grid managers who have to be sure the grid generates and uses the same amount of electricity at the same time.
Grid managers are concerned about the future of numerous energy generation and storage systems and the contribution and withdrawal from the grid. In Texas, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, knows and is looking for a digital system to manage the large number of energy generation and storage systems that will hit the grid in the coming years.
Grid managers need digital systems to monitor and manage these systems on very short increments with response times as low as a half second.
Decentralization is a key aspect of distributed energy and blockchain technology. The two technologies are growing rapidly at the same time and exhibit similar key aspects.
For a decentralized energy network to survive, it requires cyber security. Blockchain is cryptographically secure.
Energy evolution requires the ability to track and react quickly to rapidly changing grid conditions as over time there will be thousands or more distributed solar generation sites and energy storage sites. To manage a grid under such rapid change over time and to manage all of those millions more transactions, blockchain provides the technology to tract and transact all of those with a distributed ledger and be more efficient than a centralized intermediary. Individual and aggregated groups or energy generation and storage can interact with each other to produce outcomes beneficial to each other and the users of the distribution system in a particular area.
The new disruptive electricity network is emerging at the same time as blockchain technology.
Emerging at the same time, distributed energy generation and storage and blockchain provide a mutualistic relationship—for the distributed energy resources to work with the grid and local distributed system, blockchain may be a key enabler of that energy network.
The convergence of these two technologies may create numerous lucrative opportunities for companies focused on solving these energy challenges and enable greater use of renewable energy.
Chief Product & Quality Officer - Driving Product Strategy, Quality Assurance, and End-to-End Process Excellence | Certified Product Owner
6 年https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/80-unique-blockchain-platforms-application-areas-binoy-suvarnadas/
We can still unf*ck this
6 年Neil Pennington
Patent Attorney | Intellectual Property, Trademark Law
6 年My tesm in the Philadelphia area are investigating the Nori proposal using carbon transfer tokens to help mitigate global warming.? Our vision is to facilitate cultivating greenery over vast areas of desert.
Don’t let what has been done stand in the way of what can be done.
6 年As part of our project, AR3Global.com, we are creating a security token to fund clean energy projects, but we are also building a blockchain based energy transaction platform that is transparent, secure and efficient. Energy professionals around the world understand that one of the critical issues in grid operations is that most systems run on a Siemens protocol SCADA system that is known by any industrial user and easily hacked. By creating an energy transaction and operations platform that is transparent and verifiable, you can easily identify and isolate bad actors in a grid operations system, preventing dangerous or harmful actions on a blockchain before the command is implemented. Work smarter not harder.