Ahead of our comprehensive 2018 review, RED CEO, Armand Doru Domuța closed out the year with a groundbreaking update and just days later, on 4th January 2019, conducted an in-depth AMA on Telegram to answer the community’s burning questions, setting the stage for an exciting year to come!

New Year Update

Happy New Year RED Community!

With just a few hours left in 2018, there’s a lot to cover about this year’s journey and a comprehensive article will soon follow, but we can sum it all up in a few words: it was a wild ride!

On behalf of the RED Team, I want to thank our community for its fantastic support and involvement in the success of our project, especially in such a dramatic year for the markets.

We cherish your support and we believe that standing united will help us greatly in our endeavor to disrupt the energy industry.

As it stands now, we are making progress each day on various aspects of the business :

RED received hundreds of franchise applications in 2018 and found several good partners in Spain (Jorge Marcos and Andres Roca), in Italy (Heliopolis) and in the US (Washington Renewable Energy Corporation (WREC) and for entering the Chinese market which is a giant about to wake up, RED partnered with the Swiss Biogas Tech company First Biogas International AG led by Daniel Ruch, an honorary citizen of the Chinese Hebei Province and the market leader in China in the development of Biogas Plants;

The Franchise model evolved after many meetings with potential franchise partners to provide a solution more suited for the current market conditions:

We developed a Type C franchise for renewable energy installers and developers that will be part of the RED Marketplace;

The specs of the Type A franchise will be tailored for the needs of existing energy suppliers providing them access to RED’s unique ecosystem of consumers and producers, virtual balancing system, crypto invoice payments, and real-time meter readings on the blockchain; this will help RED expand even faster by integrating existing suppliers with their entire customer base;

The Type B franchise will be available online for any broker of the RED Platform with bonuses for onboarding consumers and producers, as well as the possibility to manage consumer accounts with empowerment;

RED opened subsidiaries and applied for energy supply licenses in several countries in the EU and Asia (UK, Germany, Spain, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Singapore);

Restart Energy Serbia’s subsidiary obtained it’s first international energy customers in August and has been increasing its portfolio since then with more private companies and state-owned entities having won several public tenders;

RED solved the high tx cost and high latency problem on Ethereum through our dev team lead by our CTO — Vali Malinoiu — that developed a unique technology called SWAZM that allows for 2,3+ mil. tx/sec with ZERO fees — this is perfect for recording real-time data from millions of energy meters directly on the blockchain;

The beta testing of the decentralized RED Exchange is in progress and the technical part is performing nicely and generating events almost instantaneous on the blockchain each time a transaction or order is performed with ZERO fees;

Several RED Meters have been installed at larger energy consumers and are currently being tested. Here we have another innovation, mainly that the meters write data directly on the blockchain with no “middleman” involved;

RED has obtained a crypto wallet and crypto exchange license in Estonia that is valid in the entire European Union and that allows RED to exchange crypto for fiat and vice-versa, meaning you will be able to buy and sell MWAT for fiat. There will be a simple buy MWAT with credit card feature on the platform to make it easy for non-crypto users to enter;

Restart Energy partnered with Alpiq Switzerland for cross-border energy trading in the entire European Union;

RED is currently investigating the possibility for acting like a sleeve and providing a trading screen for RED users to bet on energy prices on all the major European energy exchanges (such a feature involves obtaining a security license);

Having the RED Exchange in place will allow RED to deploy a Decentralized E-Commerce Marketplace, where third-party Type C franchises will be able to sell their services and products related to renewable energy like Solar PV Modules, Inverters, Batteries, Mounting Structures and Services to RED users globally, having MWAT as the base currency;

A key feature of the platform that RED is planning to launch in 2019 is the RED Crowdfunding Module that will allow renewable energy developers from small to big to design and launch crowdfunding campaigns for their projects managed by the platform;

RED launched the Electric Tour in partnership with Renault and McCann Erickson; an attempt to beat the Guinness World Record for the longest journey with an Electric Car.

There are many more important developments for which there is no space and time to discuss today that are featured on RED’s blog: https://blog.restartenergy.io/

And now let me give you some really important news that I know you are all expecting:

RED is planning to release the initial KWT until February 15th

Restart Energy started a pilot program with one of Europe’s largest telecom companies with 70+ billion Euro turnover and tens of millions of customers for onboarding energy consumers (more details will be disclosed at a later date).

Restart Energy is preparing to launch a 100 mil. USD security token in 2019 with guaranteed ROI that is linked to equity in the group of companies that include Restart Energy, RED, and a portfolio of renewable energy assets. The Restart Energy Security Tokens will be available to be purchased with fiat, crypto, and most importantly MWAT, so that anyone holding MWAT will be able to own equity in RED and Restart Energy with access to voting rights and dividends.

In conclusion, the year was eventful — filled with accomplishments and joyous moments for Restart Energy. It has been the best year we have experienced so far! And we don’t plan on slowing down!

I want to give special thanks to the entire RED Community and to the RED Team, to the amazing community management team from AmaZix lead by Jonas Karlberg, to our superhero dev team lead by Vali Malinoiu, to our Meter dev’s lead by Lucian Corduneanu, to our Marketing team lead by Andreea Petrica, to our chief editor Denis and his wife Emma, to our legal team lead by Kinga Kusztora, to our energy contracting dep. lead by Bogdan Nanciu, to our customer relationship dep. lead by Isabela Luisa, to our invoicing dep. lead by Oana Mircu, to our DSO dep. lead by Ana Maria, to our Gas Supply dep. lead by Marian Iriza and Viorel Dulgheru, to our balancing dep. lead by Viorica Gheorghe and Mara Grigore, to our financial dep. lead by Cristian Bogdan, to our risk management dept. lead by Raul Ciocan, to our Serbian Office lead by Mladen Jeremic, to our energy trading dep. lead by Renato Doicaru, to our Electric Tour Team lead by Christian Gernemann and our partners at McCann Erickson, to our legal partners Alexandru Pusa si Asociati lead by Alexandru, to the Blockchain Association of Romania lead by Adrian Stratulat, to our M&A advisory partners at Ecovis International lead by Adrian Ciurtin, to our partners at PATRES lead by Martin Moise, to our partners at REPOM lead by Radu Craciun, to our partners at First Biogas International lead by Daniel Ruch, to all our partners, customers, and franchises for making the dream of “energy freedom” a reality!

We wish to thank you all for supporting us and, with only a few hours left in the year, we wish you a Happy New Year!

Big things are going to happen in 2019 — so stay tuned!

Hello Everyone and Happy New Year! I’m sorry for the late hour, we had some very busy days in the office, and yes…some of us at least myself and Vali were working also during the Holidays.

You can never take time off your goals and objectives, right? :)

We decided to organize an AMA session this week in order to answer some burning questions related to the platform and business development.

Security Token Offering

RED Community: Is there a target quarter for the STO to take place?

Armand: I don’t want to give any specific dates right now because we want to focus on the platform launch first… if any, it will be Q3/Q4.

It will depend on a successful launch of the platform first. I just want to make sure everyone here sees the prospect of an STO as what it truly is and not speculations.

First of all the STO is part of a larger deal including a merger with a European renewable energy fund backed up by the European Bank for Development. This group has renewable assets all over Europe including Romania.

Restart Energy will absorb 100 MW of renewable assets and they will become minority shareholders in the company.

The STO will be mostly for institutional investors and they will receive a discount for purchasing RESTO Tokens with MWAT!

The deal itself means a huge capital infusion in both Restart and RED, combines all the assets into one entity that will be listed and moreover it means that 1 GW of renewables will enter the platform (owned by the same energy fund) and start selling to retail consumers in several EU countries.

RED Community: Will there be a whitepaper for the STO?

Armand: Yes there will be. The STO, if we decide to proceed this way, will be handled by an authorized EU securities broker so that institutional investors can participate.

The funds from the STO will go into 2 categories:

Financing the dev. of the Platform Financing the deal with the Telecom company for onboarding millions of customers

RED Community: “Mostly institutional investors” means private people will also be able to participate?

Armand: There’s a technical term in the EU. I think it’s called ‘experienced investor’ as a private person.

RED Community: From where will this STO give shares? From Restart Romania or in a holding that’s included in Romania as well? What will be the percentage you wanna’ give for 100 mil USD?

Armand: These details haven’t been decided yet.

Then there’s another thing… Running two very demanding companies started taking its toll, so I’ve decided to find a replacement CEO or more likely a management team for running the traditional energy supply business in Romania and focus on developing the RED Platform internationally.

RED-P

RED Community: Are you able to showcase a working demo of the RED platform?

Armand: Actually, there is Beta Testing going on right now.

RED Community: Would really appreciate it if Vali or you could post a YT video showcasing some of the features of the RED platform. Vali did share some screenshots last time, but a video would be great.

Armand: Of course, there will be an explainer video ready as we approach the launch date with all the user flows.

RED Community: Do you know if it would be possible to send KW directly to a user on RED at any price?

Armand: Yes, Vali already showcased that you will have this function of sending KWT and MWAT to any user based on Tel or Email.

RED Community: Wouldn’t the price of KWT be determined based on the market?

Armand: Yes, of course, it will be freely determined.

RED Community: If I want to sell at 1,000 Euro, and somebody pays me, there aren’t any issues, are they?

Armand: No; but good luck with 1,000 Euros! :)

RED Community: Concerning burning questions — it would be great to hear if 15 Feb is really possible for the platform to be ready?

Armand: It’s possible. I mean, we have the blockchain, the exchange, the meters are in testing… we have consumers… we have producers… there are some details like some parts necessary for the new design of the meters to arrive from China :) but we will give it our best to be ready until then. Anyway, we will publish an official timer on the website.

I’m really sorry for the delay but what we are building now is a replica of an entire energy ecosystem with actors like suppliers, balancing groups, meters, consumers, producers, traders, etc.

And given the huge interest in the EU regarding the Citizens owned Energy Communities I think after the platform is launched there will be many many usecases.

RED Community: Initial KWT disbursement is scheduled for the 15th of February? Will we have to do a coin transfer from ETH chain to SWAZM?

Armand: After you register there will be a deposit address that generates an ETH smart contract for you to deposit and that is read by the SWAZM chain.

RED Community: Any restrictions on registration, say for Americans? 😅

Armand: No, but you won’t be able to consume the KWT in the US until we sign a supplier there as well.

RED Community: Will you be onboarding existing Restart Energy customers as well?

Armand: OF COURSE!!! We are incentivized to do that more then ever, as our gov. just increased taxation for energy companies 20 times over and if we invoice in MWAT there is no tax. :)

RED Community: Will the franchise owners publish their wallet addresses?

Armand: We cannot make them publish their wallet addresses but they will stake MWAT in the RED Smart Contract.

RED Community: Hopefully the smart contract address is published.

Armand: That’s public on Ethereum. :)

RED Community: Do you plan to purchase MWAT from KuCoin?

Armand: We already did and will continue to do so at these prices, and yes, the RED Exchange will be connected with KuCoin API for purchasing MWAT to refill liquidity on the platform in the beginning, but after we have enough liquidity ourselves, I don’t see any reason to continue to do that.

RED Community: What would be the price of MWAT if you want to pay with fiat? Some people here said that price will be higher than the market price.

Armand: It will be between 0.50 and 1 USD for top up with credit card.

RED Community: Any testing yet with Solara’s Proof-of-Fusion chips?

Armand: No testing with Solara yet. Sorry, we are focusing on our own platform right now but later after we launch it we will surely explore all the possible synergies both hardware and software.

From my knowledge, Solara is also looking for a blockchain solution like we have, that is fast and with zero fees.

Smart-Meters

RED Community: Will the meters have any ability to record/register their location?

Armand: Yes they will and the platform will generate private keys associated with consumer accounts based on a combination of secure items from the meters.

RED Community: How’s the smart-meter testing with CottonTex going?

Armand: The meter broke but we fixed it. It was too close to the main panel and it went into reset due to transient currents, so we changed the design of the meters to incorporate metal housing. This is very important also for the meteorological approval and certifications.

RED Community: 😂 Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Armand: Luckily the plant manager is a good friend and he didn't mind. The good thing is that consumers seem to be very interested and they were all open to installing the meters, even corporations like PROFI (where we also installed some meters).

RED Community: How many clients are currently testing meters?

Armand: I think we have meters installed to 5 big consumers so far. These are consumers that consume as much as 10,000 households, and the coolest part is that the meters write the date directly on the blockchain (no other servers or relays involved).

RED Community: Is there any limit to the number of smart meters that can be at a single location?

Armand: There are 2 models of smart meters: a simple one for smaller consumers and prosumers, and an industrial one for producers and big consumers. Some meters are tailor designed for producers. This is because you can have very different electrical configurations in the same type of producer, think about the difference in a solar park with a central inverter configuration and how thick the cables are there, and a solar park with many small decentralized inverters and collecting distribution boxes.

The limit is related to the physical space used to mount them. They use Rogowski CT’s, and depending on the size of the consumer and the cables, you might need bigger current transformers (sensors).

Romanian Energy Tax

Armand: The recent gov emergency ordinance created a bit of chaos in Romania in Energy, Telecommunication, and Banking.

It could impact us negatively on our traditional supply business here but we are actually one of 4 local private suppliers that could be very favored by this change because it will eliminate all the competition that is left on the market.

I mean, they came in the last day of the year saying all energy companies will have to pay 2% tax on turnover for the past year (when nobody budgeted this cost), in an industry with an average net profit of 1%.

I personally don’t believe the National Energy Agency, which is independent of the government, will be able to implement this tax but even if they do it, we will probably be one of the few left standing.

RED Community: Wow, so what impact will that have on RED? Does this mean energy price will increase?

Armand: There will be no negative impact on RED as far as I can see now.

RED Community: Are you guys challenging it in courts? Or is anyone on behalf of energy companies?

Armand: Everyone is challenging it. I spoke today with someone from the Board of E-On and they had emergency meetings all day long during the holidays trying to decide if they still want to remain in Romania. :)

RED Community: So taxation will be levied on the transmission side and not the energy side.

Armand: It will be everywhere and all the extra costs will pass down to consumers. I’m estimating a 33% increase in final energy price.

Imagine that Romania’s OPCOM is the most liquid energy market in the region along with the Hungarian HUPX (but OPCOM has double the volume) and nobody was trading these days on the OTC markets :)) it’s crazy.

Traders that are engaged in forward energy contracts are trying to close the contract calling force majeur.

So in all this commotion and chaos, we are trying to safeguard the company from any possible negative effects and move along with development as fast as possible.

RED Community: So do you view this as good for the platform because even if prices rise costs should still be lower for the consumer, making Red more competitive?

Armand: I think if we give consumers a 5 - 10% discount for paying with MWAT it should work just fine.

Renewable Development

RED Community: What would be an estimated output of producers in MW in the first year? What are your expectations?

Armand: It’s very difficult to say now. If ANRE publishes the new legislation where producers up to 5 MW will be able to sign bilateral contracts, it should be quite a few.

Anyway, if we move forward with the merger and absorb 80–100 MW of renewables in Romania, those will run on the platform fully.

RED Community: What is the status of the purchase of solar parks? Will you continue the procedures?

Armand: We gave a mandate for Ecovis International for the portfolio of renewables and the merger and we started due diligence on some projects.

In Romania the market for renewable energy producers is distorted by the green certificates system and the fact that producers over 3 MW are not allowed to sign bilateral contracts with suppliers but instead have to sell on the markets as structured products which is again crazy as their production is intermittent, so for bringing these producers on the platform we need to sign CfD’s with them in a way that they sell their energy spot and we take a fix leg in a swap contract so that we can let them in the platform. This means we are relying on smaller producers in the beginning.

One of the reasons for organizing the STO is for the upstream integration with renewables.

RED Community: What about outside of Romania in Spain and Germany? Will you be able to start with larger producers?

Armand: Yes!

RED Community: Do you think you can own at least one park at the end of 2019?

Armand: We did purchase a smaller solar park but nothing worth bragging about. :)

Telecom Pilot Program

Armand: Other fantastic news that we have is that we started a pilot program with “the biggest Telecom Group in EU”!

And if all goes well we will first sign a contract for 5 million consumers in Romania and afterward probably many more countries in Europe. They just love the concept of the RED Platform because it matches their own campaign of liberating the Internet. :) Plus, they have hundreds of local shops where they can sell the meter hardware and also SIM cards for the meters. :)

We are working on the project for the last year but it takes a tremendous amount of time to convince and steer big corporations… it’s like steering an aircraft carrier.

RED Community: How will telecom company customers use the RED platform?

Armand: The Telecom customers will be onboarded into becoming Energy customers on the RED Platform.

RED Community: The telecom customers must have MWAT tokens as well to buy the energy?

Armand: Of course.

Expansion and Franchises

RED Community: I’m sure you’ll be able to onboard a lot of people on the platform from Romania.

Armand: We are starting with companies and moving to smaller consumers after we have stable volumes.

Anyway, Romania will be just the starting market and not even a big market for RED. We are focusing on expanding to Germany and Spain this year.

RED Community: What is the status of getting the licenses in Spain and Germany? How long do you think it would take?

Armand: We already have the EIC code in Spain and Germany. It’s just a matter of how we want to start because we are in talks with a German supplier and might leave to him to develop the German market if he takes a Type A.

RED Community: How is the license for Bulgaria going?

Armand: It’s been requested but it’s not a priority now. The Bulgarian renewables market is also distorted by crazy legislation, unfortunately; but we will be there.

RED Community: “The type B franchise will be available online for any broker of the RED Platform with bonuses for onboarding consumers and producers and the possibility to manage consumer accounts with empowerment;”

Would/could/does this mean somebody could operate a purely virtual/online franchise?

Armand: Yes, that’s the idea to help spread the platform faster.

RED Community: Can a 100,000 level franchise be run by one or two people or is it a much bigger team requirement?

Armand: If it’s a Type B… yes.

RED Community: So I can be such a franchiser without any office and bringing clients to Restart? No office or employees?

Armand: Exactly.