During Bitcoin Wednesday on 4 October 2017, Director of Energy at Consensys, Karl Kreder introduced one of the world’s first blockchain-based retail electricity solutions, Grid+, which enables customers to buy or sell electricity in real-time.
Grid+ is a secure gateway based on Ethereum that brings together hardware and software by allowing Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to interact with associated software. The gateway, also called a Smart Energy Agent, makes automated purchases for the IoT device and adjusts its consumption according to the price of energy in the market.
During this presentation Karl said:
“The reason why we chose renewable energy as an area to focus on is because climate change is affecting mankind and we need to collectively figure out how to build clean energy systems that don’t use carbon. So we see blockchain as a catalyzing technology to help move past the current electrical grid to the future electrical grid”.
He also discussed the role of blockchain technology in the distribution of renewable energy:
“Blockchain tech creates the financial layer which is complementary to the TransActive grid, where there are assets, which are independently owned, independently financed, and have to interact with each other. So as we move towards more and more of these distributed assets we need them to be able to interact not just with some centralized financial intermediary, but actually with each other. Blockchain tech can help making the system more efficient”.