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Electric power systems around the world are rapidly changing. For over a century, these systems have relied largely on centralized, fossil fuel plants to generate electricity to end users. Utilities had a straightforward objective: to provide electricity with high reliability.
Climate changes urged governments to set a new ambition for electric power systems. The way it works is requiring those systems to rely heavily on volatile wind and solar power; several are also aiming for an increase in number of electric vehicles (EVs), which can strain grids. Further complicating the matter, customers are installing their own equipmentâââfrom solar panels to batteries and smart appliancesâââto control their production and consumption of electricity.
As utilities struggle to sustain reliable services, meet new policy objectives, and cope with rising complexity, innovators are peddling a solution: blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is transforming energy production and distribution but of late itâs been getting a bad rap. Many news reports have focused on how much energy is being used by proof of work to validate transactions and generate Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is not the only use of blockchain.
Blockchain is a software technology that can enable many things, including the secure communication of important information such as financial or energy transactions. At SunContract, the teamâs decades of combined experience in the energy sector has given us deeper insight into how the traditional market operates and what needs to change. We strongly believe that blockchain tech offers many solutions to challenges we experience in the conventional energy market. So, what exactly are some of these challenges?
Challenges in energy today:
The current energy market:
â Lacks transparency
â Is inefficient
â Is still fairly centralised
â Is detrimental to the environment
â Deprives users of autonomy
How SunContract is solving these issues using the blockchain:
â Transparency
The SunContract platform is gaining a lot of trust from our users due to the tamper-proof audit trail of data they have constant access to on the platform. Users on the platform have instant access to consumption and production insights which are also immutable thanks to blockchain technology.
â Efficiency
Transparency of the platform breeds credibility among users and in this instance removes the need for intermediaries whose role has often been to create trust in a chain of transactions or in the exchange of information. This offers huge productivity and efficiency savings, as well as ridding SunContract and its customers of unnecessary paper trails. Basically, never again do any two related sets of data need to be reconciled separately because it is all listed and peer reviewed on the distributed blockchain ledger.
â Decentralisation
Our companyâs business model directly connects peers in an open energy marketplace, eliminating the middleman company, for P2P electricity trading to occur efficiently between the two parties, without the need for an intermediary.
â A focus on renewables
The SunContract platform has an array of options for its users when it comes to energy consumption and production. Solar, hydro, wind energy options are currently available on the platform with more options to become available in the near and long term. Users can not only use renewables, they can also hone in on exactly which forms of renewable energy they wish to consume on the platform.
â Autonomy for users on the SunContract platform
Before, the producer would sell his energy at a less than optimal price to a middleman company who would then make a profit by selling this energy to an end consumer. Producers and consumers had little to no control on the price that they purchased or sold their electricity at.
With SunContract, the producer and consumer directly influence the buying and selling price. The result of the agreement is a lower price for the consumer and also a higher price for the producer than if he sold it to a middleman company. Because they are equipped with some level of control, the consumer incurs electricity cost savings while the producer becomes more profitable and can break even much faster on the costs of his production assets.
Members of SunContract community in Slovenia, April 2018We canât do this aloneâŠ
SunContract would have been unable to do all this without the help of all its community and team members:
đ Users on the platform
- Household producers and consumers
- Business producers and consumers
đ Partners in the jurisdictions we operate
- SONCE in Slovenia
- Tecnoapp in Italy
đ Blockchain partners who work with us continually
- Microsoft
(Disclaimer: Author is the CMO at SunContract)
How Blockchain can be used to Facilitate the Energy Transition was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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