Two companies have joined forces in Germany to develop optimised distribution of solar and wind power based on blockchain technology.
To avoid traffic jams on power grids, Sonnen, a German company specialising in home energy systems for households and small businesses, is planning to use blockchain technology to better distribute renewable energy such as solar and wind power, which are by nature discontinuous.
To this end, Sonnen has formed a partnership with TenneT, a Dutch transmission system operator in Germany that uses decentralised residential storage batteries. The two companies plan to employ the IBM blockchain ecosystem based on the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric.
“The missing link”
“This technology is particularly well suited to managing irregular generation from sources such as solar and wind power,” says Urban Keussen, CEO of TenneT subsidiary TenneT TSO. Blockchain’s autonomous, decentralised capabilities can handle a hybrid system comprising both power plants and microgrids and thus help centralised utilities cope with integrating renewable energies, as two experts from the Oliver Wyman consulting firm point out in the Harvard Business Review (“How Utilities Are Using Blockchain to Modernize the Grid”)
“Blockchain technology is particularly well suited to managing irregular generation from sources such as solar and wind power.”
For Tennet TSO, blockchain is a source of savings since it “reduces the use of costly load balancing systems, such as the one used to regulate wind farms.” Lastly, says Urban Keussen, the power management technology is also expected to have an impact on transmission losses since blockchain would optimise local consumption of locally generated renewable energy and thus reduce massive transmission of electricity from one region to another.
With blockchain, Sonnen and TenneT propose to help reduce the cost of operation, which is particularly high in Germany, and to introduce new grid management methods that can be used by all operators.