UPDATE: Due to overwhelming interest, we believe we are now at capacity for the Pre-Sale. Any new interest will be kept on a waitlist. Thanks for your support!

Grid+ is bringing electricity retail operations to the public Ethereum network and building transactional infrastructure for a p2p energy economy, all while using the existing grid. By exposing market fluctuations, Grid+ incentivizes customers to purchase distributed energy resources (e.g. batteries) and turn them into revenue streams. In 2018, Grid+ plans to launch its first commercial retailer, which will operate in the state of Texas. For more information on the Grid+ project and our approach to modernizing electricity markets, please see our whitepaper.

Grid+ allows certain customers to purchase energy at wholesale price, which is roughly 50% lower than your typical cost of electricity today. This is useful as an incentive mechanism for desirable behavior and serves as a great way to bring new customers to Grid+. In order to meter the amount of wholesale energy being sold to customers, we have created the GRID token.

GRID tokens

Grid+ will create a limited supply of 300,000,000 GRID tokens, after which no additional GRID will ever be minted. Each GRID token may be redeemed for the right to purchase 500 kWh of electricity directly at the wholesale price with no markups, which is the price at which Grid+ purchases electricity from upstream producers.

To clarify what we mean by “the right to purchase electricity at wholesale”, let’s go through an example:

Example Usage

Suppose a customer has 1 GRID token and wants access to wholesale energy. Also suppose that she consumes 10 kWh per day and each day’s bill is $1.30, $0.30 of which goes toward Grid+ markup (30% is the expected level of markup). If $0.30 of the customer’s $1.30 bill is markup, the remaining $1.00/day is the wholesale cost. When the customer’s agent sends 1 GRID token to the Grid+ redemption contract, her wholesale credit is now 500 kWh and the 1 GRID is removed from the global supply of GRID tokens. At this point, the customer’s next 500 kWh are at wholesale cost. So in the example above, if the customer uses 10 kWh a day which normally costs her $1.30 for that 10 kWh, her bill would drop to $1.00 for those 10 kWh. She would be charged wholesale price for her next 50 days worth of electricity at this consumption rate (50 * 10 kWh = 500 kWh, the amount she received from her GRID token redemption). This savings is only realized when the customer actually consumes the electricity, so redeemed GRID can remain active for an extended period of time. In this example, GRID tokens would have reduced the customer’s electricity cost by $15.00 ($0.03/kWh * 500 kWh).

The Grid+ Token Sale

At most, 30% of all GRID tokens (90,000,000 GRID) will be sold in a combination of the the Pre-Sale (currently ongoing) and the public token sale (starting October 30th).

Once the sale begins, anyone may purchase GRID by sending ether to the token sale smart contract. GRID tokens will be sold for $1.15 USD worth of ether at a specified spot rate, published roughly 24 hours before the sale begins. The GDAX ETH/USD market will be used to determine the spot rate.

Unsold GRID Tokens

Grid+ holds 30% of the total GRID supply and will use these to acquire new customers and incentivize good behavior. In the event that GRID are rewarded to customers from Grid+’s GRID supply, those tokens are automatically redeemed by the customer’s smart energy agent device. Any unsold GRID in the token sale will be held by Grid+ and used for customer acquisition and incentivization.

The remaining 40% of GRID tokens are held by founders, future employees, and external owners of Grid+. These tokens are all time-locked and are released in three tranches: 25% after 6 months, another 25% after 12 months, 25% after 18 months, and the final 25% after 24 months, with each of these dates being relative to the beginning of the public token sale.

Pre-Sale

Grid+ is currently holding a Pre-Sale during which it will sell around 50% of the 90,000,000 tokens marked for sale. This Pre-Sale is open to the public, but requires both a minimum purchase of $50,000 and a KYC process whereby participants are legally obligated to contribute the desired amount in a specified time frame. If you are interested in participating in the Pre-Sale, please visit https://gridplus.io/pre-sale for more information.

Note that the Pre-Sale may be closed on short notice, but once you sign a document and send payment, you are guaranteed the number of GRID tokens specified in your contract.

Token Sale Model

Grid+ will re-use the token sale contracts developed by AdChain, who successfully completed their token sale earlier this year with code that was audited by ConsenSys Diligence. The Grid+ fork of this fully audited code base can be found at: https://github.com/GridPlus/token-launch-contracts.

The Grid+ token sale will begin on October 30th at approximately 12 pm ET. An exact block number will be published as this date approaches. Once the sale begins, the contract address will be published on https://gridplus.io/sale and anyone may send ether to the contract address in exchange for GRID at the published GRID/ETH conversion rate. GRID tokens are sent to the purchasing address immediately (i.e. in the same transaction) when ether is sent to the contract — all participants should make sure they send ether from an address they control (i.e. NOT an exchange address)!

NOTE: The contract address will ONLY be published on the gridplus.io domain. Please visit our website to get the address and do not send it to anyone. Similarly, do not send ether to any address provided by a third party.

An exact cap (in ether) will be published in the coming weeks. This will be roughly $35,000,000 but the exact number depends on the Pre-Sale (see https://gridplus.io/pre-sale), which will conclude in the next few weeks. If the cap is reached, the token sale will conclude and no more ether will be accepted by the contract.

More Information

If you are interested in the Grid+ token sale, we encourage you to read the most recent version of the Grid+ whitepaper (v2.0), which can be found at https://gridplus.io. If you have any questions, please join our slack and ask away.

Slack Safety

In order to avoid scams, make sure important information and announcements are coming from one of the slack handles listed below. None of us will post any addresses or ask for ether over slack — be careful!

@dago — Mark D’Agostino

@alex — Alex Miller

@mechanikalk — Karl Kreder

@mateodelnorte — Matt Walters

@yunyunchen — Yunyun Chen

@pablo — Pablo Peillard

@mike — Mike Goldin

@igor_consensys — Igor Lilic

We’re excited to bring forth the future of energy and happy to answer any questions you may have. Thanks for reading!