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What's the Problem with DERs?

I have spent more than 15 years working to advance distributed energy resources (DERs), at this point, and it's clear that DERs are technologically to the point where they have been proven time and time again and can be relied on like any other utility or grid assets. However, it's still very difficult to monetize the value that DERs can provide because there are not mechanisms in place, in most energy markets, to compensate them for what they can do. For startups that are trying to commercialize services that can be provided by distributed energy storage systems like orchestrated behind-the-meter load control and/or solar+storage, it's very frustrating to know that these products can perform as well as traditional utility grid assets, but can't be paid for doing so. The next area of innovation in clean energy must focus on solving this problem. The technology barriers are not what they once were. DER hardware and software are advanced enough to provide consis...

What is Power Ledger's play in the energy blockchain space?

Power Ledger is building an energy blockchain platform to connect all of the players of the energy ecosystem together - prosumers, consumers, market operators, utilities, etc. They want to “enable interoperability between diverse market management/pricing mechanisms and units of electricity (kWh) by way of pre-purchased tokens.” Here's my take on what they are up to. Business Model / Offering Power Ledger's offering is a blockchain-based platform that facilitates participation by “all” parties in the energy ecosystem, called the Platform. Utilities and other 3rd-party businesses that will facilitate trading on the platform are called Application Hosts. Examples of Application Hosts include energy retailers, property managers, and EV-charging businesses. Participants are the consumers or non-Application Hosts and the users. There will or can be an unlimited number of applications that run on the Power Ledger Platform. The first, and only one currently available, is FuseBox...

Energy Blockchain

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