Sustainability Problem:

• Unreliable centralized grid management or utility system which keeps track of your consumption.
• Lack of decentralisation of energy
• Pricing for micro grid energy consumption based on usage

Technology:

Blockchain allows consumers to produce energy, and to trade it directly with other consumers in a peer-to-peer network.

SolarCoin is a digital currency like bitcoin. The difference with bitcoin is that SolarCoin is not “mined“ by letting a computer work out some computations. It’s mined by producing renewable energy. If your domestic solar panel creates 1 MwH of energy, you receive 1 SolarCoin.

This solarcoin is kept in an online wallet that you can update manually or let it update and earn automatically by, for now, a Smappee energy monitor (soon other energy monitors will follow).

This same wallet can be used for three things:

1. to store the coins you create with your solar panel,
2. to receive payments for the energy you sell, and to,
3. pay for energy you trade with your neighbors.

In fact, you won’t even need to install energy production at your home. It will become perfectly possible to buy a solar panel, install it anywhere and collect SolarCoins.

Another benefit is that the entire transaction remains transparent due to a shared ledger amongst the neighbourhood.

Stakeholders:

• Blockchain currency issuing agencies
• Domestic users of renewable energy smart grid
• Local public Utilities
• Solar system installers and manufacturers

Next steps:

• Siemens has set up a pilot project in Brooklyn where a mini and smart grid for 10 homes early last year, which is due to expand and include a school, hospital and park this year and potentially the entire neighbourhood by 2018.
• Other companies and entrepreneurs should look at blockchain as a valuable way to share and track utilities.
• Policy for enabling such technology to take flight so that it can reach scale quickly
• 1,613,853.5 SolarCoins have been granted so far, in 41 out of 215 countries

 

https://richtopia.com/emerging-technologies/blockchain-renewable-energy-sustainability

https://solarcoin.org/en/frequently-asked-questions

https://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/home/pictures-of-the-future/energy-and-efficiency/smart-grids-and-energy-storage-microgrid-in-brooklyn.html