Utility Week

Customers UTILITY WEEK | 6TH - 12TH JULY 2018 | 29 Electron's chief operating officer JoJo Hubbard told Utility Week recently that the platform will play a vital role as the energy network becomes more and more distrib- uted. "The asset register tracks all the trans- active assets in the system: what they are, where they are, what permissions they have and what inherent value traits they possess, such as location or response profile." She added: "Essentially it is a data co-ordination platform that can be leveraged or extended for multiple use cases." Electron held its first "hackathon" in Feb- ruary to test its new platform. Massara says the platform is 12 to 18 months away from being rolled out in the UK and Electron has also had expressions of interest from five other countries. "We feel at Electron there is a massive problem in how you integrate all these energy-generation, storage and IoT devices and assets into the system and create a new digital backbone for distributed energy," he adds. "With our model, we feel very confident that we have a solution to this integration problem and it is unlocked by blockchain." Verv In April, in the London borough of Hackney, the UK's first physical trade of energy on a blockchain was made. The trade was on a trial network on the Banister House Estate, which has been developed by Verv in col- laboration with Repowering London. One kilowatt-hour of energy was sent from an array of solar panels with excess energy on one of the block's roofs, to a resident resid- ing in another block in the estate. Solar panels have been installed on 13 of the blocks that make up the community, with Verv smart hubs in participating resi- dents' flats, and Powervault batteries in com- munal areas. According to Verv, the platform can calculate the energy demand profile of homes, determine the solar energy supply in each storage battery and allocate green power to residents based on their needs. Verv's chief executive and co-founder Peter Davies says blockchain is a powerful tool for peer-to-peer trading because it has several tools built in, which make transact- ing and accounting simple. The water retail market MOSL's digital strategy committee chair Nick Rutherford suggests blockchain has a lot of potential in the non-household water retail market. He says the water market is ripe for the take-up of the technology because it is "centralised and new". "We're heavily reliant on asset and meter-read information, which is shared across multiple stakeholders across the industry." He said at the Utility Week-Wipro work- shop event: "We're a small market that is simple compared with the energy sector – there are only retailers and wholesalers. "But also, we're going to grow, both in terms of functionality, but also in terms of demographics. So as and when domestic competition is introduced into the water sec- tor, that's going to increase our footfall from one million customers to maybe 60 million." Blockchain could streamline "admin- heavy" processes such as new connections and customer switching and settlement. By cutting out certain parts of these pro- cesses, the use of blockchain – a digitised, decentralised, public ledger of all crypto- currency transactions – could make them instantaneous, Rutherford suggested. Cur- rently, the settlement process can take any- where between 30 and 60 days. Rutherford also believes blockchain would create the opportunity for new mar- ketplaces, products, services and essentially employment in the water retail sector. Committee members are now consider- ing how blockchain can be used to move the water retail market forward. Electralink Electralink was founded in 1997 by the energy industry to provide regulated data transfer services and has now evolved into a dual fuel solutions business with govern- ance services and energy market insights, all geared to solving industry problems. The company recognises the potential importance of blockchain to the utility indus- try but points out that it is "not a panacea" and will create challenges for the market. "We are actively researching the potential of the technology and finding potential solu- tions to maximise blockchain's value," said Electralink technical architect James McDon- agh at the Utility Week-Wipro workshop. He said the company is not currently look- ing to implement blockchain but is consider- ing its options for innovating in the space. Read Utility Week's premium report on blockchain in full here: https://utilityweek. co.uk/blockchain-applications-priorities-uk- energy-system/ THE PROCESS FOR A NEW CONNECTION BEFORE AND AFTER BLOCKCHAIN Receives confirmation Receives confirmation Submits request Registers request D D Accept/reject Smart contract/exceptions Processes request Notification & efficiency R R Field work Field work AE W Finalise charging elements Field work Field work Process request Notification & efficiency W W Retailer options Tariff options Auction? Obsolete Obsolete Ownership transferred Ownership transferred Supply point registration T tbc tbc D D R R R AE AE W W W MO C tbc tbc Of W C C 22-day SLA XX-day SLA API layer Every actor would have a node on the blockchain MO

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