Think about a future where power companies are not the sole trader of electricity to homes and businesses.
Power Ledger is an Australian company (POWR) looking to decentralise power distribution and revolutionise how we think about power storage and use. This is a blockchain company I think everyone should look into as their project vision is a highly disruptive and highly beneficial for the environment and everyday people!
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CURRENT PROBLEM AND PAIN THEY ARE SOLVING
Right now the current system is horribly ripping off every Australian. Our system (and much of the rest of the world) relies on having power generated, which is then passed on for transmission and distribution and the finally sold to consumers who have no choice but to pay for price set. Power Ledger’s idea is simple with some complexity in the details, homes and businesses with solar panels that generate surplus energy can be sold instantaneously (thank you blockchain technology) to their neighbours at a much more affordable price than what is currently offered. This is awesome as it is incentivising people to invest in renewable energy as an asset! Just as Uber and AirBnb allow people to monetize their cars and houses, so will distributing your excess power!
You still might ask, ok why does selling my energy to my neighbours make a difference? There are losers in this situation who would bear the impact of falling network utilization. The people who cannot generate the renewable energy themselves. These include financially and socially marginalized renters, the huge number of tenants living in group housing developments and even those whose homes are oriented in the wrong direction or are exposed to shading from nearby buildings. This is why incentivising prosumers (owners who sell their power surplus to their neighbours) is crucial in a future decentralised energy market. It is expected that by the year 2040 7.8 trillion dollars will be invested into renewable energy sources, this could be a nice slice of that pie!
WHY I LIKE IT
Before I go into the nitty gritty of the details of this company here is a basic outline of why I like this company. If this grabs your attention, then please continue reading!
-Anyone else think we’re literally crawling towards eliminating climate change? We need major disruption to the current energy system to really turn people’s heads and incentivise renewable energy use
-You’ve probably heard that if you shop locally and local small businesses, you are helping your local economy grow by giving money back to the citizens, not big corporations. This is the same principle with P2P energy trading
-Long term passive income source
-This is the first blockchain company out of Australia with a baller team of many years of experience in the energy, finance and blockchain industry
-They have already successfully proven their concept in a small scale housing community and are advancing to larger trials in Sydney
-The Australian Government has given Power Ledger an 8 million dollar grant to integrate this concept into the energy system
THE VISION
Power Ledgers vision also goes beyond P2P energy trading. Brace yourselves, they have quite ambitious goals for the revolution of renewable energy distribution!
There are a lot of features but here are the ones that grabbed my eye!
Micro grids
Power Ledger believe that “Distributed energy resources (DER) like solar photovoltaic systems (PV), batteries, microgrids and embedded networks has moved the power balance from central authorities to the edges of the grid, to where citizens have control. It is a reflection of peoples’ desires that their energy supplies are more sustainable, more socially-responsible, more local, more resilient and more democratic”
This type of Platform Application enables electricity metering, big data acquisition, rapid micro-transactions, and grid management at an unprecedented granular scale.
Investing into DER’s gives you the value of passive income while absent and providing you money if you don’t consume all the power you generated.
Neo Retailer
An automated retailer that supports P2P trading through effective aggregation of consumer preference and demand allowing for most instantaneous remuneration and payment settlements while managing consumer exposure to the risk of nonsupply.
Wholesale Market Settlement
Offers rapid low-cost and transparent dispatch optimization and management, data aggregation, reconciliation, and settlement for wholesale energy marketplaces.
Autonomous Asset (AA) Management
Allowing people to share ownership of renewable energy assets and trading renewable energy assets (this would be the power generated). The AA will be able to buy and sell its own power and distribute income to your assigned wallet.
Carbon Trading
“This Platform Application class offers smart contracts for carbon traders to assure digital transactions across organizations: credibility of asset using immutable distributed ledger technology; and transparency and auditability. It supports reporting and surrendering of carbon credits or certificates to regulatory authorities.”
THE TECH/HOW IT WORKS
Show me how it works you say!
(Disclaimer: I am normally a right brain thinker and interpreting tech is new to me!)
I am going to simplify the tech so that people with short attention spans like myself can read it and get something out of this.
The market ecosystem will be supported by two tokens operating in its two blockchain layers. These are called Sparkz (literally the power you buy in a token and trade with after purchasing with your POWR token, it also maintains a steady exchange rate between local market electricity prices and the exchange priced POWR token) and POWR (Cryptocurrency that you can buy and sell with and is used to purchase Sparkz).
-Note Sparkz is only specifically limited to representing the tokenized value of a unit of electricity in varying markets around the world, it is not the next hot investment.
-POWR tokens are bought and exchanged on the public etheruem blockchain using the Power Ledgers FuseBox P2P software (basically this is the market place for buying and selling energy)
THE TEAM
I wont go into too much detail about the team however I will give a few bulletpoints of Power Ledgers superstars. These are no rookies in their industry!
- David Martin (Managing Director): 20 years’ experience in the electricity industry and has held executive positions in two State-owned electricity utilities. David has spent the past 6 years as a senior consultant to industry participants, specializing in regulation of distribution networks, DNSP consumer engagement, renewable/new technology feasibility studies, and business development.
- Jenni Conroy (Product Development): Jenni has more than 30 years’ experience in the Western Australian energy industry has provided strategic, commercial, and regulatory advice to boards and senior management of Energy Market Participants and to governments in developing energy policy and regulation.
Time to be Mr Sceptical
- Has solar panel efficiency gotten to the point where we CAN become decentralised and independent from energy companies? Clearly not right now but in the coming few years potentially
- Will the upfront costs of setting this up for everyday people be a deterrent and slow progress down? If there is an economic downturn, less people will be likely to invest, despite there being long term benefits (humans are less prudent than you think!)
ULTIMATELY WHY DOES THIS COIN HOLD VALUE?
-Provides the security of a smart contract between and the buyer or seller of renewable energy
-Gives you access to the platform
-You are incentivised with POWR tokens to generate and distribute renenwable energy (loyalty reward program)
-Provides access to ‘Asset Germination Program’ (this is freaking awesome). Allows coin holders to be able to buy a fraction of renewable energy assets (solar, wind or battery farm) and you get a portion of their revenue (very handy passive income source)
Resources
bitcoinmagazine.com/img/images/powerledger.width-800.jpg
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/power-ledger
https://powerledger.io/media/Power-Ledger-Whitepaper-v3.pdf
https://steemit-production-imageproxy-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/DQmWhjKrozHJeNVvfe8NJ5EMcYYFDDCaBhtxGHhn4eq1W3M