Wednesday 27 September 2017

UK firm bags £640,000 for blockchain platform

A London-based firm has been granted nearly £640,000 by the UK Government to show how blockchain technology could help balance the electricity grid.

The funding will allow Electron to scale and integrate a blockchain trading platform that allows power consumers to be paid to adjust their energy use to balance supply and demand.

Unlike traditional trading platforms that match buyers and sellers on a one-to-one basis, Electron says its platform will allow multiple parties to co-ordinate and share the value of a single consumer’s action.

That is expected to maximise the overall value of the market while enabling individual demand flexibility buyers to share costs.

Research suggests the UK flexibility market is worth £1 billion a year, forecast to rise to nearly £5 billion by 2030 as the percentage of solar and wind capacity increases.

Electron’s project, supported by National Grid and Siemens, will run for more than a year.