Digital identities – building block for an automated energy system

German energy agency DENA has piloted a blockchain machine identity ledger, while Energy Web has advanced its self-sovereign identity solution Switchboard.

The pilot at Dena’s Future Energy Lab, its first, was focused on laying the foundation for interoperability and an industry standard for digital machine identities, creating and linking them to an identity register based on blockchain technology.

In undertaking the project, the Dena researchers considered the lack of uniform identities for generators and other distributed assets in the energy system was a digital gap in a decentralised system, in which switching between different applications may need to occur automatically in near real time, e.g. for flexibility provision.

Indeed, without them a secure and scalable digitalisation of the entire system would not be possible, they state, as they lay the foundation for the data exchange.

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Such digital identities, like their analogue counterparts, provide a unique identifier for a person or machine, with the difference that with the blockchain their checking and use can be automated.

The digital machine identity consists of an identifier, e.g. an identification number, that uniquely identifies the device and its attributes.

In the project, the identity attributes were proven by digital certificates, the verifiable credentials (VCs).

The identifier stored separately from these was mapped using a decentralised identifier (DID), enabling a decentralised identity detached from central identity providers, the so-called self-sovereign identity (SSI), with the blockchain acting as the decentralised identity register.

“Only if systems can quickly and easily offer various services according to the respective needs or customer requirements and are reliably identified at all times will their potential be exploited to the maximum,” comments Philipp Richard, Head of Digital Technologies & Start-up Ecosystem at Dena.

“Digital identities are the starting point for reliable chains of trust and traceable data exchanges.”

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A Dena statement reads that the results of the pilot project contribute to the success of the energy transition and that they have formed the starting point for a follow-up project that is already under way.

The project also is piloting a cryptochip module for integration in the smart meter gateway and other grid assets during manufacture.

Energy Web Switchboard

Energy Web, also much focussed on self-sovereign identities as a fundamental pillar of the energy transition, has announced production deployment of its open source Switchboard tool on the Energy Web Chain.

The release includes major updates to the front-end Switchboard web application as well as the back-end libraries and components to provide access to the full suite features offered by legacy identity access management solutions in a decentralised architecture, according to the organisation.

Switchboard was developed to advance self-sovereign identity adoption in the energy market and beyond and is considered a comprehensive, enterprise grade solution.

New features include credential revocation and expiration, full support for role-authorised issuance, credential issuance based on email verification and asset administration as well as better alignment with the W3C’s Verifiable Credential Standards.

Among further developments planned is a decentralised universal resolver service for credential holders and issuers that makes it possible to resolve identity data from any blockchain or database.