Eniblock Platform
How blockchain enables electric vehicles to balance grid power loads
Blockchain Xdev in conjonction with IRT SystemX have federated renamed actors of the energy industry to build a decentralized energy marketplace using blockchain
Environmental concerns incentive the energy market to transition towards green energy & decentralized production
Consumers equipped with renewable energy production means, such as domestic solar panels, are able to sell their self-produced energy locally.
Renewable energy production and household consumption are variable by nature, and often do not match. With the emergence of new vehicle-to-grid (i.e. V2G) technologies, electric vehicles can help store and re-distribute energy smoothing energy balance on the grid.
Context
Expensive storage of locally produced green energy
Objective
Enable P2P automatic energy trading, to increase efficiency of local generated green energy
Main Challenges
- Compliance with GDPR regulation
- Ensure scalability
- Minimize solution energy consumption
Blockchain benefits
Microtransactions
Reduced costs for micro-transactions, making possible instant settlement.
Automatic invoicing
Eniblock platform allows to automatically invoice transactions.
Secure payment
Blockchain based payment with Eniblock Secure.
Circular economy
Enabling short circuit energy markets to emerge.
This project demonstrates the benefits of blockchain technology in the implementation of a local energy trading solution integrating the electric vehicle
Kei Brousmiche
Head of R&D - Blockchain Xdev
Today’s challenges
P2P energy marketplaces are a first step towards effective re-allocation of energy, yet they have limitations:
- EV owners can’t sell energy surplus to the power grid
- Individual power producers have limited possibilities to sell their excess energy production
- Energy aggregators have the obligation to buy back energy surplus, resulting in negative economic impact
On the road to redistribution
Our solution adds vehicle-to-blockchain capability to a decentralized local energy marketplace. This shifts the energy balance of individual electricity producers because storage capacity is added to the marketplace.
Charge and share
Economic incentives encourage behaviours that are beneficial to all:
- EV owners are encouraged to store energy when renewable power production is high and later sell the surplus energy back to the grid. Eliminating intermittency of renewal power
- EV drivers are invited to charge their batteries when demand is low, then give the surplus energy accumulated back to the grid during peak hours at higher prices.
As a result, the boosted power grid benefits to all:
- EV owners get extra revenues by selling their accumulated energy to the grid;
- Individual producers can sell their surplus energy to electric car owners, who have different energy needs;
- Production & consumption balance is smoother, meaning that energy aggregators have less requirements to buy excess production;
Navigating around bumps and potholes
Key tackled challenges
- V2G and local marketplace promotion: via a playful demo, we highlighted the benefits of such capabilities for end-users, municipalities and the environment
- Multi-agent simulation to assess economic viability: to simulate the community with its households and EVs, we created a simulator based on the multi-agent paradigm, suited to distributed architectures such as Blockchain. The simulation performs an analysis of the economic gain provided by the solution in different scenarios (e.g. the number of EVs, their battery capacity, the number of households, etc.)