Energy Blockchain

I recently had the opportunity to attend a 2-day design thinking workshop led by IBM (particularly Jos Roling and Peter Patterson ) on the topic of  blockchain applications in the energy industry .  Despite the formal process, it was incredibly insightful and informative. Amazingly, we were able to get in the room - for 2 days! - the key people who really need to be involved if you're actually going to be able to make a difference in the energy industry.  We had: - the Market Operator - the Local Distribution Company - the Distributed Energy Resource (DER) provider - the Payment Experts - the Blockchain Developers and SMEs We had a very productive 2-day session focused on identifying and defining the problems in the energy industry that can be solved by an energy blockchain and the applications that it can facilitate.  We brainstormed, we argued, we learned.  There were a lot of sticky notes used. You can't come up with  solutions that will make...

In a previous post , I talked about the differences between distributed ledgers and blockchains. Another somewhat controversial topic in this space is the debate around public versus private blockchains.  Grid+ , a startup attempting to make it possible for consumers to participate directly in energy markets, has a recent blog post called "No Country for Private Blockchains", in which they articulate a good argument for the public blockchain.  They are deploying their solution on Ethereum and feel that the public blockchain approach helps to spread the cost of the shared infrastructure, makes it more secure, and increases value by ensuring that state changes are on the public chain.  Another energy blockchain application startup, PowerLedger , in Australia seems to be taking a hybrid approach using a public+consortium blockchain - for now at least.  Given the high degree of privacy and security that is required to participate in the energy industry today, it's an im...