Energy

This is a case study in a review. The publication page gives 19 Jan 2016. It describes possible uses. It does not describe a system that was running in Britain, and it does not say a regulator had adopted one.

The report is by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser. The case study is credited to Igor Nai Fovino and Jean-Pierre Nordvik, of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. That centre was investigating practical uses of distributed ledgers in the retail energy market. It gives two.

The first is people producing energy at home or in a local community, and trading it. Combined with smart meters and batteries, a distributed ledger could open that market to people who both produce and use energy. Smart meters could record the energy they generate on a distributed ledger. The case study calls that the equivalent of an energy-coin system. Electricity produced that way could be used in the house, stored in a battery, or given back to the grid. Because of the ledger, it could also be used somewhere else, for example when charging an electric vehicle abroad, or sold through the ledger.

The second is a ledger of energy contracts. A person who wants to change supplier has to close one contract, open another, and revisit the contracts for related services. Recording those contracts on distributed ledgers would make the change simpler, including on a computer or a phone. Questions remained about whether these uses can grow, stay secure, and stay stable.

This is a blog by Pamela Taylor, published on 2 Oct 2017. Ofgem held a roundtable on 13 Sep to share what people had learned from blockchain trials in energy, and to discuss what the rules would mean. It does not name the firms. It does not say a trial had finished. It does not say a simpler database was chosen.

A separate paragraph says a number of innovators are building technology so that small-scale producers, including homes and businesses with solar panels, can sell energy to other consumers. That paragraph does not say the technology is a blockchain. This card does not treat it as the same thing as the roundtable.

The Innovation Link, launched the previous December, had given energy-regulation feedback to 97 innovators. Of those surveyed, 88% said the steer was very useful and helped to shape their business model. Only 17% of innovators that used the Link were already in the energy sector. Those figures are for the Link. They are not a count of blockchain trials.

A second window of the regulatory sandbox was open for expressions of interest until 27 Oct 2017, with meetings by 3 Nov 2017. A July update had reported talks with five innovators that wanted to use the sandbox, and those talks were in their final stages. It does not say those five were using a blockchain.

This is a white paper presented to Parliament in Jun 2019. It is numbered CP 111. It describes people trading energy with each other. A quotation in it names blockchain technology. The paper does not say a platform had become the way households buy energy.

Ofgem's Innovation Link gives fast, frank feedback to businesses that want to launch a product, a service or a business model. The Link also offers a regulatory sandbox, so innovators can trial those things in the real world for a fixed period, without some of the usual rules applying.

The regulator has backed new ideas such as local platforms on which residents can buy energy from local renewables and trade it with their neighbours. That sentence does not say the platforms use a blockchain.

The next sentence quotes Colin Calder, chief executive of PassivSystems. He said the firm had the go-ahead to break the traditional rules of the energy market in order to build a platform for that kind of trading, and that the project fitted the firm's expertise in blockchain technology. Those are his words. The paper does not say the platform was built, or that it became a national system.