German Industrial giant Siemens has become the latest large corporation to enter the blockchain space. They recently announced that they have the intention to use the Distributed Ledger Technology to make the energy sector more efficient and “provide more power to the people.”

Their two departments, namely, Energy Management and Power Generation Services departments are partnering with Energy Web Foundation (EWF). The Energy Web is an open-source, scalable blockchain platform specifically designed for the energy sector’s regulatory, operational, and market needs. It serves as a foundational, shared, digital infrastructure for the energy and blockchain community to build and run their solutions. Together, the Energy Web Foundation, Affiliates, and Community are unleashing blockchain’s potential to accelerate the transition to a decentralized, democratized, decarbonized, and resilient energy system

Their press release states: “Transactive energy applications will be a major force in the transformation of the energy sector towards decentralized, decarbonized and digitized energy systems, where distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar, wind, stationary storage systems, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and others as well as flexible loads are playing an ever-increasing role.”

Even though much details about the case is not publically available, Siemens seem to be using a custom implementation of Ethereum.

They added: “At the same time, new forms of plant and project financing are needed. Blockchain technology enables transactions in a decentralized network to be validated efficiently and securely. This enables new business models of energy and flexibility trading between consumers, prosumers, producers and network operators, taking into account user preferences and network restrictions. Ultimately, block-chain-based applications and business models could help increase the overall efficiency of future energy networks and enable new forms of asset and project financing.”

The company is already using blockchain technology to assist their users to generate new forms of energy or offers solutions and services for optimized control of energy generation and consumption. By combining microgrid control solutions and blockchain technology, operators of photovoltaic systems can feed excess electricity into the existing local grid and receive their compensation directly from the customers.

To further develop this technology and the new business models based on it, Siemens is collaborating with New York start-up LO3 Energy in the areas of innovative microgrids and peer-to-peer energy trading platforms and is currently implementing its first project in Brooklyn.

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