The shifting tide in the generation of power is only part of the story.

Real disruption is also beginning to occur in the way energy is delivered and consumed. Recent advances in batteries mean households can store electricity for back-up or load shifting. This gives people greater flexibility to buy and store electricity when rates are low, and consume it as needed. Peer-to-peer digital platforms that cut out the middleman and directly connect green energy producers to those who want it are starting to emerge. When combined with the increasing installation of smart meters, this means consumers are able to take control of their energy usage and reduce their bills.

It’s within this context that blockchain technology can be leveraged to further enhance these new dynamics. ** I’m assuming familiarity with the catch-all term blockchain — but if you need a primer, I suggest starting here and here)**

So what exactly can blockchain bring to the party?

By storing every interaction as immutable blocks, data about identities, contracts, pricing, transactions and payments can be captured forever.

There are plenty of fledgling projects laying the foundations for utilizing blockchain within the energy industry, but only a handful of players who have actually established themselves. The rest of this article will compare these early movers, who are all making use of the Ethereum blockchain and the ERC-20 token model.

Most of these projects are fundamentally peer-to-peer marketplaces, allowing a distributed network of individuals and entities to trade excess energy between one another at lower costs than previously possible.

Restart Energy is an established producer of solar cells, and follows a slightly different model. They have launched a blockchain platform in order to operate as an energy franchise sales company, with an objective to onboard energy producers who then sell directly to consumers through the platform.

WePower is a crowdfunding/financing platform for renewable energy projects, which gives participants the opportunity to raise capital by selling future energy production.

MARKETCAP

Power Ledger is the clear leader in the marketcap and has more value than all the other projects combined —as of early Nov 2018: $62M compared to $49M.

**👉CLICK HERE for interactive version of chart**