In Illinois, blockchain startups seek to work with utilities on grid software
Blockchain startups say utilities and regulators in Illinois have been more open to working with them than in other states.
Revolutionary rhetoric around blockchain’s potential to make traditional utilities obsolete has fostered tense relationships in the energy world. Startup companies boasting about wanting to democratize the electric grid with peer-to-peer software haven’t been welcomed everywhere by the monopoly firms that have managed the system for nearly a century.
In Illinois, though, a less-antagonistic dynamic is emerging, with blockchain companies courting collaboration with the state’s largest utilities.
“A lot of blockchain guys want to tear down the existing grid and put the utilities out of business,” said Mark Johnson, founder of the Chicago-based Clean Energy Blockchain Network. “But that’s not our approach. They are on the team, and we are trying to strengthen the grid.”
The project involves researchers at Northwestern University, and Power Ledger, an Australia-based blockchain platform developer. The group wants to develop a peer-to-peer energy trading platform in Illinois in which the utility is paid to transmit power between neighbors with solar panels or batteries. Johnson said the group has had talks with ComEd, though a representative from ComEd said there is no partnership in place at this time.
The group is targeting large-scale energy users, especially those with carbon cutting mandates like universities and large industrial campuses. Graduate students at Northwestern University will use data collected by the project to quantify the benefits of energy blockchain trading, like how much carbon is cut, how much energy is spent, and how much money is saved.
Meanwhile, a Chicago blockchain startup called Omega Grid is working with utility Ameren to test its software on the utility’s experimental microgrid. Last year, Omega Grid was one of seven companies invited to participate in the Ameren Accelerator, an energy start-up incubator based in St. Louis, Missouri.
“Omega Grid is creating the opportunity for a peer-to-peer energy transfer by using existing utility infrastructure,” said Brian Dixon, head of the energy incubator and chief operating officer of Capital Innovators in St. Louis, Missouri. “They built blockchain technology to allow individuals to push energy back and forth to each other and buy and trade by using their software platform and using the utilities existing infrastructure.”
At a demo day last October, Killian Tobin, CEO of Omega Grid, announced that Omega Grid would be partnering with S & C Electric Company on the blockchain pilot located at Ameren’s microgrid in Champaign. The microgrid has a natural gas generator, a kilowatt scale wind turbine, a solar array, and battery storage on site. Tobin said that this would be “the first blockchain transactive energy project at the microgrid at Champaign,” Tobin said.
They are testing the software, currently, and Tobin expects the project to be completed by the end of the year.
Blockchain is a digital ledger platform that verifies transactions and other functions without the need for a central authority. The basic argument for blockchain software on the grid is that it can track the production and consumption of power, help fund renewable energy projects, and enable owners of solar panels or batteries to sell electricity to neighbor, commonly called peer-to-peer energy trading.
