The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy, has been investigating blockchain for energy transactions.
Some use cases are a natural fit for blockchain. The proliferation of solar energy and other renewable sources has a missing link. For neighbors to share energy during peak times rather than sourcing it from the grid, there’s a need to trust the data about how much energy has been transferred, and it requires a cheap means of payment. Blockchain meets both requirements.
“Distributing grid operational decision-making is revolutionary,” said Dane Christensen, an engineer at NREL. “It’s really like somebody in the 1980s expounding on the economic opportunity of the Internet. Everyone would have laughed at you. That’s kind of what’s happening right now with blockchain applications — the foundational tools for another technology revolution are emerging, and this could be one of them.”
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