Since its inception, Restart Energy has always set its sights high and finally, the time has come to enter one of the most prosperous energy markets in Europe, as well as a great innovator in terms of transitioning from an old centralized system to a more modern distributed one. Germany is the world leader in terms of its prosumers and prosumer-friendly regulation, leading to a market that is very accepting of innovation and thus a key target for expansion on RED’s itinerary. As such, it is with great pride that we officially announce our German branch’s registration, as “Restart Energy GmbH”!

Leader in Renewables

Over the past 30 years, Germany has been a leader in developing and implementing solutions for a pollution-free environment, leading to it becoming one of the main pillars of clean energy distribution in Europe. To illustrate this point, Germany has reduced its total gas discharges by 27.4% from 1990 to 2016, having an impressive 36% of the country’s total energy output generated by clean, renewable energy. It is also one of only three countries worldwide who have the photovoltaic capacity to satiate nearly all of their entire internal energy market’s needs from solar power alone, on certain days.

Complementing their achievements in solar, Germany also heavily invested into wind power, with it becoming the country’s second highest energy source — accounting for 18.8% of Germany’s total energy output. To illustrate the scope of Germany’s eolian coverage, it can be said that energy consumers received a very pleasant Christmas gift for the second year in a row, when negative power prices occurred due to unseasonably warm weather and powerful winds — that is, consumers were effectively being paid to use up energy and relinquish producers of their surplus. This issue is referred to as ‘renewable surplus’ and while long-term it can be solved by building more storage facilities, in the short-term, producers have managed to sidestep the issue by paying consumers to use electricity instead. Thankfully, along with more affordable solar and wind generation, storage options are steadily becoming more efficient and affordable, therefore, renewable surplus is also becoming more manageable as a consequence.

Another parallel issue is that of electricity transmission, respectively the maximum electrical charge able to be carried at one time by a part of the power grid. In certain parts of Germany, power lines have not been able to keep up with wind and solar peak production times, leading to a situation where a lot of energy is wasted due to not being able to be forwarded to other parts of the grid for consumption, or stored locally. To combat this issue, Germany’s major electricity companies have started heavily investing in infrastructure upgrades for the current power grid, going so far as to install so-called ‘phase shifters’ — high-capacity valves that can facilitate a much higher electrical flow during peak times — on the German border, especially the Polish and Czech border regions.

Prosumers

For the same reasons that phase-shifters have been installed on key border regions, more work needs to be done on the internal grid, as there are already cases of private individuals that own small renewable power generation facilities — mostly solar panels or wind turbines — and feed their spare energy production into the grid (prosumers), wanting to install further such energy production, yet being unable to do so due to maxing out the local power lines they have access to. These events have occurred with increasing frequency, as Germany is now seen as a world leader — perhaps THE world leader — in terms of prosumer-friendly legislation and adoption, and is eager to further accommodate this new class of energy citizen.

According to a study funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), German prosumers numbers might increase up to 10.7 million by the year 2030 — such numbers will and already have a substantial contribution to the country’s permanent switch to renewable energy.

Furthermore, an ever-increasing number of prosumers is directly correlated with fewer greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, as well as providing consumers with nearly endless choices for purchasing energy. This represents an exciting opportunity for Restart Energy — to offer German prosumers the possibility to conduct more efficient business using our RED Platform and to bring the diversity of German prosumers to the global energy market.

Germany has certainly reached many milestones in the development of a greener country, considering they reached their target of increasing renewable energy by 30% three years in advance, and continue to make substantial progress towards a fully-green energy market. As of now, Germany only produces 2% of global carbon discharges, with plans to further reduce it already in the works.

The Energiewende

With supportive legislation issued in 2010, Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ is perhaps the most ambitious and expansive project of its kind — a national plan to reduce carbon emissions to a trickle, while also switching the energy market to an affordable, yet reliable renewable output.

This includes phasing out nuclear reactors by the year 2022, slowing down coal-fired energy production to a bare minimum, and further diminishing greenhouse gas discharges by 40% until 2020, with targets set as high as 95% for 2050 (comparative to 1990). Estimates predict that by the year 2025, renewable energy will already cover 45% of the country’s total energy output, with a 60% target already being set for 2050.

More than 90% of Germany’s citizens support the idea of transitioning to renewable energy and it is clearly noticeable the country is unified in wishing to set an example to the world. Having ambitious plans for the future of the energy sector parallels our own mission statement — our company is willing & able to rise to the occasion, helping to shape that future for the best.

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.