BLOCKCHAIN WILL REVOLUTIONIZE THE ENERGY SECTOR
by Vincenzo Caccioppoli
The Blockchain can be a revolutionary innovation for many sector, above in especially in the services sector. In particular, as regards the energy industry, this technology can have very important very positive evolutions.
The public services industry is facing a series of disruptive transformations in the form of new energy sources, storage, efficiency and market digitization. An unlikely disruptor is the blockchain, better known as the technology behind the Bitcoin digital currency. For the utilities sector, the blockchain could have the potential to simplify transactions and reduce costs while catalyzing transformation towards cleaner energy and greater efficiency. The Blockchain which is a decentralized, public and distributed digital database, existing in multiple computers simultaneously, where users work together to create blocks containing information about a transaction and provide an almost error-free and anti-fraud data check before validation, it is the technology that in the six services sector can be a revolutionary technology. The fact that the blockchain was created to eliminate any intermediation can really represent a revolution in the services sector, where instead the counterpart still plays a fundamental role.
Specifically in what is the energy sector thanks to the blockchain for example, people are paying more and more attention to energy sharing. Pioneering blockchain companies like SunContract are creating a world in which customers with ultra-long energy generation can sell the remaining electricity to their neighbors on the local energy market. Consumers can also buy locally produced renewable energy, which can be cheaper than buying from a utility company. Using block technology, a new way of creating loads can be created on the network, making the service more efficient and cheaper, even for non-business customers. Thanks to this new technology, a peer energy exchange peer chain can easily be created, which would also allow the private individual to exchange or sell his energy not consumed to another user, without the passage of any intermediary, thanks to the simple stipulation of a so-called “smart contract”. The same thing can be done even more easily between prosumers (those who produce and use their own energy) and local consumers, always establishing a “smart contract” for supply and demand to which this energy can be exchanged. But the same argument can also be made among the major producers in the sector, who can exchange energy without the use of intermediaries or marketplaces.
This clearly leads to much lower cost in the sales process, with mutual advantages also in terms of efficiency and energy consumption. Furthermore, thanks to blockchain technology it would be easy to overcome all the differences in protocol and infrastructure between the various players. This innovative technology could also be very useful for more practical and immediate questions such as for example the location of electric car refueling stations, showing very simply where they are located nearby and whether or not they are available for recharging. In this sense there would already be a pilot project in California, which seems to be giving absolutely satisfactory results. Finally, the blockchain could be a real revolution for the renewable energy sector, as stated by Polga Jensen, an expert in the sector of the multinational Eon. “The increasing use of small renewable energy installations, such as solar panels on roofs, can create tension on power grids designed for large centralized power plants. By allowing the peer-to-peer energy trade and stimulating local consumption at the time of production, the blockchain could stabilize the network, favoring decentralization “.
