Blockchain Battery Grids Are Powering Up at Lightning Speed

Published on by Cointele | Published on

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Equigy, a blockchain platform for managing batteries connected to the electric grid, is expanding its operations in the European Union.

Ecologic technology news outlet, Green Tech Media, reported on May 29 that three major European Union's electricity transmission system operators, or TSOs, joined Equigy's platform.

More precisely, TSO with operations in Germany and the Netherlands TenneT, Swiss TSO Swissgrid and Italian TSO Terna all joined the network.

Equigy's system is a free platform for registering and tracking energy transactions allowing home batteries and electric cats to sell electricity to the grid.

Digital transformation technology program manager at TenneT and Equigy technology leader, Martin Van't Verlaat, explained that the firm decided to use blockchain technology because it allows the system to function without a centralized database.

"We could have used other technologies for this as there are just a few participants. But looking ahead we expect the energy market to become one big dynamic, decentralized system with many actors interacting at the different voltage levels and believe that blockchain is the technology that can grow toward this vision. It future-proofs us from an IT strategy perspective."

Equigy decided to run its system on a private instance of the Hyperledger framework that is only accessible to local members of the energy industry.

TenneT is piloting electric vehicle systems with car manufacturers Nissan and BMW and stationary batteries in the Netherlands.

Lastly, Terna is working on both the performance and capacity of electric cars when used for flexibility and electric vehicle fleets as virtual power plants.

Using blockchain technology to manage electricity distribution is not a new idea.

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