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Powerledger, a leading provider of blockchain-enabled energy solutions, is revolutionizing the way energy is traded and consumed.
Their innovative platform facilitates the trading of renewable energy in a scalable manner, empowering households, organizations, and the grid itself to participate in energy transactions.
By leveraging blockchain technology, Powerledger offers consumers the choice to select the energy they consume, enables peer-to-peer energy trading, and ensures a seamless audit trail of transactions.
This secure and efficient method of trading excess energy not only promotes sustainability but also reduces dependence on the traditional grid.
One of the key benefits of Powerledger’s technology is its support for the transition from a centralized to a distributed grid, ushering in a new era of decentralized energy markets.
As the world strives for net-zero emissions and greater reliance on renewable energy sources, Powerledger’s platform plays a crucial role in achieving these goals.
By employing advanced algorithms and interval-based energy matching, Powerledger enables the trading of surplus and deficit energy among participants, allowing prosumers (households and businesses with PV solar) to sell their excess renewable energy to consumers at better prices than the grid offers.
This shift in energy trading reduces the sale of surplus renewable energy to the grid at low prices, benefiting both prosumers and consumers while driving the adoption of green energy solutions.
Join us in this episode of Climate Tech 100 together with Powerledger.
Can you provide an overview of Powerledger’s energy and flexibility trading platform and how it facilitates trading between households, organizations, and the grid itself?
Powerledger has developed a world-first blockchain-enabled energy platform allowing the trading of renewable energy in a scalable manner.
The Powerledger platform features can be used to:
- Give consumers choice over the energy they consume.
- Facilitate the trading of energy peer-to-peer (P2P).
- Provide a seamless audit trail via blockchain-recorded transactions.
- Provide a secure and efficient method to trade excess energy.
How does Powerledger’s technology support the transition from a centralized to a distributed grid, and what benefits does this transformation bring to the energy sector?
Electricity lies at the center of global energy challenges, since it is not only a large source of global carbon emissions on its own but also plays a key role in decarbonising large economic sectors such as buildings, transport and industries.
To achieve net-zero submissions by 2050, electricity must decarbonise even faster.
Many corporations as well as big commercial & industrial (C&I) consumers and households are committed to purchasing 100% renewable energy to meet their consumption.
However, the procurement is through matching volumes on a yearly or monthly i.e. backward facing basis.
Full decarbonisation is achieved by advancing 24/7 carbon-free energy.
Its end state results in every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumption met with carbon free electricity or even better, renewable energy sources, every hour of the day, everywhere.
To achieve this, a new type of interval based energy matching and automated provenance tracking of energy sources is required that also provides advanced technology and instantaneous settlement of transactions.
The challenges faced to evolve seamlessly into a fully de-carbonised 24/7 Renewable Energy end state, stems from multiple areas.
Data collection and handling, matching of portfolios with user-friendly visualisation tools and determining the surplus or deficit on an hourly basis are the first to be addressed.
Advanced algorithms would then be applied to trade the surplus and deficits amongst the participants in a manner that benefits them commercially and reduces dependence on the grid.
The Powerledger platform is capable of ingesting raw meter readings i.e. import and export data for a certain interval and creates a virtual trade between two participants within a fixed group of meters (trading group), based on an agreed upon set of trading logics.
The platform generates a transaction for each trade.
Therefore, it is a near real-time matching mechanism that executes the handover of one participant’s energy ownership to another, in exchange for a predefined price.
This way of trading will reduce or eliminate the surplus renewable energy sold to the grid at a very low price at any instance.
Instead, it would be sold by the prosumer (households/businesses with PV solar) to consumers for a better price than the grid was prepared to pay for it.
Whilst their peers are able to purchase energy that is green (and less than the grid price of traditional energy).
Thus benefiting both the prosumer and the consumer.
Similar to how a DISCOM purchases energy from the spot market at wholesale prices to be sold to its customers, in this instance the DISCOM buys the excess energy generated from their consenting prosumers, for a price greater than the feed-in-tariff and sells it to consenting consumers at a price lower than the business as usual grid rate.
The DISCOM has full control over the energy being exchanged through the grid and hence is able to adjust the ownership for a quantum of energy at a given time.
What are some specific examples of projects or initiatives in various countries where Powerledger’s technology has been implemented successfully, and what were the outcomes?
A pilot project demonstrating peer to peer trade of renewable energy was conducted by Powerledger in conjunction with India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) and Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL).
The main objective of the pilot project was to test the technological feasibility of peer-to-peer trading of solar rooftop (RTPV) energy on a blockchain platform at Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (MVVNL) and its value proposition to MVVNL and their customers in the city of Lucknow, India.
The peer to peer platform created an online marketplace where prosumers and consumers could trade electricity, without an intermediary, at the mutually agreed price.
The results of the pilot project demonstrated that both prosumers and consumers could benefit by participating in peer to peer energy trading.
Further, it was demonstrated that there is an opportunity to include a network access charge for the DISCOM within this type of trading environment that will incentivise the DISCOM to promote peer to peer trading of energy amongst their customers.
Finally, the technical evaluations of the trading platform, meter reading, communication solution, and transactional integration with the billing system were all positive and demonstrated to meet the end-to-end requirements of managing the peer to peer energy trading environment efficiently for MVVNL and UPPCL.
As a result of the pilot, Powerledger has been crowned 2022 Global Champion at the World Summit Awards (WSA) for its work in promoting distributed energy in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Powerledger was awarded the top honour for the ‘Environment and Green Energy’ category, claiming victory over the four other finalists representing different countries in the same category.
The competition was part of the WSA Global Congress 2022, an international virtual networking and learning event that focuses on the role of digital technology in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The submission from this project led to regulatory changes to allow peer-to-peer (peer to peer) trading in Uttar Pradesh.
What solutions does Powerledger offer for environmental commodities trading, and how does it enable traceability and transparency in this aspect of the energy industry?
TraceX is a digital marketplace that can efficiently handle the trading of Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs).
Users are able to place orders for EACs, such as Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), against sell offers already available in the market dashboard.
Users are anonymized within the dashboard and can customize their buy order using the purpose built user interface.
Sell offers become visible for all market participants as soon as they are placed, and when matched, are executed with secure and timely on-platform payments.
TraceX is fully integrated with the largest voluntary REC registry in North America — the Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System (M-RETS).
Users are able to link their M-RETS account and import RECs to the marketplace once the link is established.
Successful purchases in the marketplace are updated directly through to their M-RETS account.
Using the TraceX platform, customers can select their preferred certification scheme, or label, as an order attribute, providing them with a targeted method to buy RECs that are aligned with their interests.
TraceX currently supports the purchase of RECs that are from CRS-listed facilities and RECs certified by ECOLOGO® from the M-RETS registry.
To ensure that RECs within TraceX are correctly tagged as being from a CRS-listed facility, Powerledger employs rigorous measures to compare the data within the RECs (pertaining to the generator) against the list provided by CRS.
This is done on a daily basis.
Furthermore, when users buy RECs on the platform they are able to see the effective date and expiry date of the generator that produced the certificates, within a downloadable transaction summary.
Our proprietary blockchain tracks each successful transfer of ownership along with the attributes contained in the RECs, providing an immutable audit trail for each transaction.
Could you explain the role of blockchain technology in Powerledger’s platform and its impact on decentralization and distributed energy markets?
Powerledger sees blockchain as something akin to barcodes in supermarkets.
Barcodes and scanners don’t define what a supermarket is, but they allow supermarkets to operate at high volumes and low margins.
After all, who wants to see a cashier plod through a trolley full of four or five digit prices with all the possibilities of mistakes and errors?
By analogy, distributed energy isn’t defined by blockchain, and could in certain circumstances, manage without it.
We could for example have used a glorified spreadsheet or regular database.
But just like a barcode scanner in a supermarket, things get so much better with barcodes and scanners.
Apart from the unhackability of blockchain, there’s the decentralisation concept that is part of creating confidence.
Wherever concentrations of executive power and money come together, a system is open to abuse.
A good example being the setting of LIBOR rates which were manipulated to make an elite group of people a large amount of money through fraud.
If a trusted central authority were ultimately responsible for controlling accounting for peer to peer sharing, the possibility of LIBOR style fraud could exist.
A whole market could be tipped in a certain direction based on a lack of transparency.
That would deter people from taking up a new way of running energy.
So, from that point of view, blockchain facilitates the decentralised way of approaching things.
By dispensing with the concept of a trusted centralised source of regulatory authority we think it will be better placed to scale up and become part of the future.
Our approach with POWR and our blockchain contemplates current market conditions and ability to move to a decentralised model as the market matures.
Blockchain is a decentralized, secure, and transparent digital ledger of transactions.
The benefits of blockchain technology include:
- Decentralization: No single person or entity controls the data, making it less susceptible to tampering or corruption.
- Security: Blockchain uses cryptographic techniques to secure transactions and prevent unauthorized changes.
- Transparency: All participants in the network have access to the same information, promoting transparency and accountability.
- Immutability: Once data is recorded in a block, it cannot be altered, ensuring the integrity of the information.
- Efficiency: Transactions are processed quickly and without the need for intermediaries, reducing costs and increasing speed.
- Traceability: The permanent and public nature of blockchain makes it possible to track the history of a transaction from start to finish.
Can you discuss the energy efficiency and sustainability aspects of Powerledger’s blockchain, including its reduced energy consumption and the use of renewable energy sources for validation?
In terms of metrics we normally talk about energy consumed, per transaction, on a blockchain.
We’re currently completing the migration of our energy trading applications over to a new Powerledger blockchain that is Solana-based, instead of an Ethereum-based one as before.
This not only makes us much more scalable, as Solana allows for 50,000 transactions per second vs. the 12-15 transactions per second on Ethereum, but it also makes us much less energy consuming: Solana’s blockchain consumes only 2,707 joules or 0.00075 kWh per transaction, compared to Ethereum’s 238 kWh per transaction, so it’s way less energy intensive (we only consume 0,0003% of the energy an Ethereum-based chain would, while still leveraging the great benefits of smart contracts).
We use a Proof-of-Stake consensus model that is very similar to Solana’s, there’s some additional developments on the Powerledger blockchain on the security side not affecting the energy consumption, so energy consumption is similar to Solana for this.
In terms of validation of transactions, we’ve even incorporated additional mechanisms so that validators need less CPU cores than for Solana, making the validation for the Powerledger’s blockchain even less energy intensive than Solana.
The exact amount of energy your project will consume due to blockchain usage will depend on the size of the tracked unit(s)/ amount of trading meters, the intervals of measurement, etc.
Looking ahead, what are Powerledger’s key areas of focus and upcoming initiatives to further advance the adoption of renewable energy, decentralized grids, and responsive energy markets?
The EU has introduced the concept of Energy Communities through the CEP and RED II regulations.
8,400+ CAI – Collective Action Initiatives from Coops & Associations from the communities across 30 countries in the EU have been estimated.
Current total renewable capacities installed are estimated to be around 6.3 GW, out of which 50% is solar PV. CSC – Collective Self Consumption is a subset of CAI mainly applicable to Renewable Energy Communities.
The rules for CSC – Collective Self Consumption have been passed by Parliaments of about five countries.
These rules are conducive to peer to peer (P2P) trading within specified geographical boundaries.
Powerledger is also developing a trading feature to suit CSC.
Further, DSOs having grid issues are installing grid scale batteries (UK, France, Ireland) while the residential batteries market is high in Germany and will soon be in Italy.
This presents significant opportunities for Powerledger’s xGrid and LEM platforms.
Powerledger is also pioneering projects with energy retailers in Austria, France and Spain, and is well placed to ramp up its presence and deployments in the EU.
Many emerging economies in the Asia Pacific region such as India, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have aggressive RE targets and whilst several of them are doing well with large scale RE deployment, they are lagging heavily behind in distributed renewables.
These countries are also searching for alternatives to premium FiT or Net Metering type subsidies to accelerate their distributed renewable installations.
With regulation now supporting this transition in countries like India, peer to peer (P2P) trading coupled with Local Energy Market and Flexibility Services provide an efficient alternative to these countries.
Powerledger is in advanced project origination discussions with several energy DISCOMS in India which plans to install over 100 GW DERs by 2030.
The largest state within India, Uttar Pradesh and others including Delhi and Karnataka, have already P2P trading in their solar policies largely because of the interactions and successful pilots conducted with Powerledger.
Other regions in India are following suit – and P2P is favorably received by MNRE for national level deployment.
With a population of over 1.3 billion, India is poised to enact regulatory changes in a phased manner with UP and Delhi likely to commence in 2023.
In the other emerging ASEAN markets, Powerledger has opportunities to support the acceleration of distributed renewable energy through the P2P marketplace.
Powerledger is already recognised by Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Japanese governments for its enabling software solutions to achieve their renewable energy targets.
Besides this, in the US large corporations are actively seeking solutions to accelerate their decarbonization targets and net zero initiatives.
Powerledger’s blockchain-enabled REC trading marketplace, TraceX ,provides a new level of efficiency, transparency, liquidity and ease of trading ethical and high fidelity RECs.
TraceX will be in a great position to be the preferred marketplace for REC trading in North America enabling multi million dollar REC trading through it.
Learn more about Powerledger here.