Elia and Powerledger to explore peer-to-peer energy trading on blockchain
A memorandum of understanding between TSO Elia Group and Australian blockchain company Powerledger is aimed to investigate consumer flexibility.
The two companies intend to evaluate the benefits and challenges of implementing peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading using the Elia Group’s traXes energy services platform together with Powerledger’s xGrid software platform for P2P trading.
With flexible consumption becoming increasingly more important as renewable energy levels increase, Elia Group’s ‘Consumer-Centric Market Design’ is aimed to facilitate the transition towards a more flexible energy system by enabling energy service suppliers to provide their customers with better products and incentives and thereby monetise their flexibility.
The MoU with Powerledger is intended as a new step in realising this goal.
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David Zenner, Head of Consumer Centricity at Elia Group, describes it as “an exciting collaboration” that will help to demonstrate how grid operators can enable energy transactions between the prosumer and the consumer.
“It will validate new functionalities in the traXes-platform and will bring us closer in realising the consumer-centric energy system of the future. Moreover, it will enable us to make more and better use of renewable energy in the future.”
Elia Group’s traXes platform is designed to enable the efficient and secure sharing of consumer data between market parties and is complementary to Powerledger’s xGrid blockchain-enabled platform, which provides users with the choice over what renewable energy to use and trade renewable energy peer-to-peer.
The venture is seen as combining the strengths of the two platforms.
Dr Jemma Green, co-founder and Chairman of Powerledger, comments that it contributes to a more efficient distributed grid.
“This project shows how different parties can join forces in the new electricity market design, in transforming the energy system towards more flexibility.”
The initiative with Elia is the latest in a series of initiatives that the Elia Group has undertaken with blockchain in its operations with others, including e-mobility and the market integration of electric vehicles e-mobility and renewable energy certificate trading.
