This will be the norm in a few years.

Working for a company focused on creating a green future has its perks — one of them being the fact that it makes you more aware of the problems that the environment faces. And, naturally, you end up asking yourself if you can somehow help fix them.

Being a big technology enthusiast, I've always been up to date with how the automotive industry evolves, and lately, a lot of manufacturers are focusing on developing electric vehicles. Sure, most of them are far from being affordable, but presuming that the price tag wouldn't be a problem, I just kept wondering if it’s actually worth investing in an electric car.

Of course, the main advantage is obvious: no more money spent on fuel, as everything you need to do is plug it in for a few hours and you’re all good to go. But this is far from being the same thing as charging your phone, for example.

An electric vehicle basically doubles the electricity load of a household. After all, if your electric vehicle is a daily, we’re talking about charging a pretty big battery very often, depending on how much distance it covers.

The energy market is still not ready for this…

As the number of households with electric vehicles grows, this means new opportunities, but also challenges for utilities. Current distribution lines can struggle with a large number of vehicles being plugged in all at the same time, so there’s a large demand for a network able to manage this entire load.

A recent study, conducted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance revealed that the sales of electric vehicles will jump from 1% of current sales to — get ready for this — 54% by 2020, totalizing 33% of the global car fleet. Besides this, global electricity demand is expected to rise to around 38,700 terawatt-hours by 2020; right now it’s somewhere around 25,000. Let that sink in for a moment.

These ‘guys’ won’t be able to deal with so many plugged in EVs

This surge means that markets will be forced to somehow provide much more electricity! Oh, and don’t forget that car manufacturers will constantly try to improve the capacity of the batteries their vehicles are loaded with, as well as the charging speed. So yeah, the World will become a ginormous electricity consumer!

And this is where the transformation of the energy market as we know it begins, in order to fix the problems this growing demand will create. Because, yes, such a growth has its minuses as well.

The grid won’t be able to deal with demand much longer…

First things first: the peak surge will lead to a disruption, considering that local grids are simply not designed for this. The network will be in big need of change, so it can cope with the production, transport, and distribution of additional energy.

Under current conditions, the grid will be able to deal with this surge in demand until 2020, but right after this, the risks of shortages and disruptions will become acute. Unless action is taken now, of course.

Sure, there are solutions, like incentivizing electric vehicle owners to start charging their cars outside high traffic hours, such as before going to bed, when the grid is usually working at a reduced pace, or by leveraging smart grid digital solutions. However, the latter is currently just a concept, consisting in spreading the charge based upon availability on the local grid. But this is something we’ll discuss another time.

The solution is out there since… forever!

Personally, I believe that the most reliable solution to this energy market change, due to the increasing number of electric vehicles, is making use of the Sun. Through solar panels, obviously.

Fancy having this on your house?

The additional energy they are generating can be used (or stored) in local batteries, thus accommodating that extra needed to charge your car, without affecting the local grid. And Restart Energy is offering complete kits, ready to be installed and transform your house into one that is fully sustainable, by using renewable energy.

But that’s not all!

Using the RED Platform as a prosumer, you can share a part of the energy your solar panels are producing with a friend or neighbor — as long as they’re on the platform as well — for example, in order to help them charge their electric vehicle. Basically, you’re creating your own micro-grid, just for charging your rides with renewable energy. How cool is that?

As soon as electricity demand will skyrocket, it will cost billions to upgrade the grid in order to meet this need. Why not be one step ahead and not only contribute to changing the energy market faster, but also to a greener future?

About Restart Energy

Restart Energy Democracy (RED) is a blockchain-powered platform, backed by Restart Energy — a European energy provider with 20 million USD in revenues. The company was built with a vision to democratize the energy sector and quash the dominance of legacy monopolies in the energy world. The company’s credentials include a customer base of 27,000 household and 3,000 corporate clients, expanding at more than 2,000 clients per month (5,000 new customers in the first two months of 2018), and its impressive growth: 1700% from 2015 until today.

Restart Energy is developing the world’s first peer-to-peer, fully decentralized energy transfer platform allowing users to send and receive energy worldwide, based on its proprietary virtual balancing system, that uses A.I., Big Data, and IoT technologies. The RED ecosystem is comprised of the RED-Platform, RED-Franchise, and RED-MWAT Tokens.

The RED-Franchise is the first power retail franchise to simplify and allow any company or entrepreneur to operate their own power utility enterprise, enabling them to start selling energy in more than 35 deregulated energy markets globally.

MWAT tokens are crypto-tokens that enable the buying and selling of up to 1 MWh of electricity per month on the RED-Platform Software and will facilitate the development of affordable clean energy, through free-market practices. Upon completion of registration on the platform, an initial loyalty bonus of 0.11 kWh is applied. Producers send out monthly loyalty bonuses through the RED Loyalty System, totaling 1–5% of traded on-grid energy in exchange for access to the RED Platform.

Importantly, it should be noted that potential franchise partners will need to own (this is not a form of payment to us) a certain number of MWAT tokens, in order to qualify for our various franchise tiers — the secret to our award-winning growth as a business!

For more information, please visit our website, our Telegram, and read the Restart Energy whitepaper. Join our announcement channel for updates regarding Restart Energy Democracy.

We invite you to join our RED Platform’s beta and earn 50 MWAT for joining now; refer your friends for even more rewards.