Essay Sample on Blockchain Technology and Applications

In the solar energy, the main suppliers are middlemen companies and system operators used to connect the consumer to the producer, contracting delivery and supply services. Blockchain technology has an application geared towards facilitating a peer to peer transactions. In this case, the information transactions are shared among all the system users, and everybody is bound to verify the information. According to Cardwell (2017), this technology offers to decentralize the market setting enabling peer to peer supply, consumer empowerment, and organization of system operation. It creates a direct transaction between the producer and the consumer in the solar energy sector.

The transition to a world of new energy that is digitized, decentralized and decarbonized has been brought about by coming up with blockchain technology applications that address the issue of renewable cryptocurrencies, electrical vehicle sharing and charging and automated bill payments. This technology has served as a smart transaction platform at a regular level whereby customers and prosumers can sell and produce their energy with a high degree of autonomy (Philippine, 2017). Grid operators in this setup become more efficient since they can demand real-time and balance supply directly by engaging prosumers.

For instance, an organization can develop a microgrid project whereby people can buy and sell solar power amongst themselves on a blockchain platform which for this case will be TransActive Grid that documents all transaction. The example of an LO3 Energys TransActive Grid is a blockchain application software that enables new business models applied to a transactive energy space and a rapidly growing and primarily distributed grid (Philippine, 2017). This software has been developed as a digital ledger with the ability of sharing, updating and distributing information without a need to have a ledger for data or a central storage facility. LO3 Energys TransActive Grid has a proprietary blockchain platform. According to Philippine (2017), LO3 Energys TransActive Grid empowers peer-to-peer energy exchanges with the two parties aware of precisely the same, conceivably disposing of the requirement for vitality intermediaries. It also authorizes vitality makers to pitch specifically to buyers and also permitting computerized, monetarily motivated, control of DERs for matrix adjusting, emergency management, request reaction and much more. The future of blockchain technology is that it will be able to allow millions of devices like electric vehicles, solar PV, water heater and batteries to transact amongst themselves at the electrical power distribution edge.

The blockchain will be able to transfer energy, regulate digital currency payments and record data within a village-based decentralized solar power micro-grid. Cardwell (2017) indicates that the blockchain will be able to facilitate smart contracts managed software that will be coordinating transfers and automatic payment from different entities under specific conditions. If the application is within a shared generation capacity contained micro-grid, the contracts will allow consumers, produces and prosumers who are participants in the system to sell and buy solar energy amongst themselves by using digital tokens. What happened to the energy meter data from a given consumer of a microgrid is that this data becomes an oracle that can feed into a management system and token issuance and create tokens that represent the prosumers solar arrays that generate the electricity surplus. The token can indicate the amount of energy produced from a renewable energy source allows for its transaction on the blockchain and the ability to be transferred from one smart meter wallet to another.

The digital registry which are the assets of solar equipment namely, batteries, PV cells and panels, lines among others will be embedded in a blockchain ledger to give trusted immutability creating an automatable and precise record of time-stamped changes of impediments (Jd Supra, 2016). According to Cardwell (2017), this conditionally creates an underlying history of property rights a secure registry enabling the outside investors to be issued with a solar backed crypto-securities. This can be the structure of either as an equity claim on the revenue and asset streams generated, a right to a fixed stream of payment of negotiable loan bearing and a hybrid of certificates that local investors buy diluted over time.

The most straightforward iteration of this is that a microgrid local owner will be able to issue a solar crypto-securities to attract equity investors and outside fixed income investors to help finance the project. Within this village, the owner will be able to create power lines that will link homes into the microgrid and then be able to charge he households for the services based on a pay to use model (Cardwell, 2017). Applying Internet of Things to this grid will enable an automated smart contracting management and kill switch chip for the households which receive the power to be contingent on digital payments that are always up to date. For the system of payments for either the loans or power consumption, the payment will be made with digital tokens or cryptocurrencies which later will be converted making periodic payments in bitcoin or based on the technology that the owner prefers (Jd Supra, 2016 & Jha, 2010)). These payments guarantee security prevention of double spending under the bitcoin protocols creating a fully secure and verifiable flow of revenues. The smart contracts now will be able to ensure that the digital currency inflows are distributed among fixed income and equity investors based on their claims accordingly.

One of the main challenges faced today is the energy theft. With the blockchain technology in place, it will envision the ability to monitor power usage closely in a blockchain and digital environment to help to enforce great security against electricity theft. The blockchain's unchanging, profoundly secured appropriated framework guarantees that this procedure is computerized and can't be hacked or debased by an individual or institution. Using the blockchain brings more openness, including on information traded.

The blockchain peer to peer model is built explicitly on the unfalsifiable digital ledger, and permanent trust engendered creating a financial tool that curbs the risk of energy efficiency transactions. Among the experiments presented, Philippine (2017) contends that blockchain has proven to be efficient and a proficient energy cost saver. It has been able to speed up results, lower costs and create a flexible system leading the way to a methodical flexible, resourceful and decentralized system. Its efficiency, cost-effectiveness and transparency and efficiency benefits can lead to more operative stakeholder assimilation to take resolute whereabouts.The application of blockchain technology has significantly transformed into a smart contract based management from the financial and payment application of physical resources in the Internet of Things. Blockchain innovation, which is decentralized, secure and self-executing, licenses creating complex information systems for proficient, self-executing group administration of vitality systems. This vitality advertises peer to peer trades to empower group individuals to exchange vitality, safely, and consequently. These new arrangements will make the age, utilization, and exchanging of solar and other inexhaustible wellsprings of vitality more proficient, more affordable, and all the more ecologically agreeable.

Reference list

Cardwell, D. (2017, March 13). Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy among Themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/business/energy-environment/brooklyn-solar-grid-energy-trading.html

Jd Supra. (2016). On the Grid: Blockchain May Create New Possibilities for Grid Enhancements and Energy IoT Applications. JD Supra. 2016-12.

Jha, A. R. (2010). Solar cell technology and applications. Boca Raton, CRC Press.

Philippine, T. (2017). How blockchain can make the world more energy efficient.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/blockchain-energy-efficiency-finance/?utm_content=buffer05aa8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer