The industry of public services is facing a series of disruptive transformations with regard to the energy sector and new energy sources. A probable further innovation in this respect is blockchain technology.
For the public services sector, the blockchain could have the potential to simplify transactions and reduce costs while catalysing the transformation towards cleaner energy and greater efficiency.
The fact that the blockchain was created to eliminate any intermediation can really be a revolution in the public services sector, where intermediaries still play a key role. In particular in the energy sector, thanks to distributed ledgers, people are increasingly focusing on energy sharing.
Blockchain pioneering companies like SunContract are creating a world where customers who generate power can sell the remaining electricity to their neighbours through a local energy market.
Consumers can buy locally produced renewable energy, which can be cheaper than buying from a public services company. A new way of grid charging can be created using blockchain technology, making the service more efficient and cheaper, even for non-business customers.
Thanks to this new technology, a peer-to-peer energy exchange system can be easily created, which would also allow private individuals to trade their unused energy, without the need for any intermediary, thanks to the simple stipulation of a smart contract.
The same thing can be done all the more easily between prosumers (those who produce and use their own energy) and local consumers, by establishing through a smart contract the price at which this energy can be exchanged.
The case of Efforce
Another case to consider in the energy sector related to how the use of blockchain is definitely Efforce, a company that includes among its co-founders Steve Wozniak, the renowned co-founder of Apple.
But the same can be said of the big producers in the industry, who can exchange energy without having to resort to intermediaries or marketplaces. This clearly means a much lower cost in the sales process, with mutual benefits in terms of efficiency and energy consumption. Moreover, thanks to blockchain technology, it would be easy to overcome all the protocol and infrastructure differences between the various operators.
This innovative technology could also be very useful for much more practical and immediate issues such as the location of charging stations for electric cars, showing where they are located 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 very satisfactory results. Finally, the blockchain could be a real revolution for the renewable energy sector, as Olga Jensen, an expert in the sector of the multinational Eon, says.
“The growing use of small renewable energy installations, such as rooftop solar panels, can create stress on electricity grids that were designed with large, centralised power plants in mind. By allowing peer-to-peer energy trading and incentivising local consumption at the time of production, blockchain could stabilise the grid, aiding this decentralisation”.
