Blog Post

This post is part of a five-part series providing an overview of Power2Peer’s clean energy marketplace, a blockchain-secured trading platform where producers and consumers can exchange clean energy kilowatts for fair market value. Learn more about Power2Peer’s mobile app, P2PConnect, and join the green energy revolution!

Part 3: Applying Blockchain Technology to Secure Energy Data and Transactions
In parts 1 and 2 of this educational series, we discussed both the foundation of the clean energy marketplace—solar panels—and the integration of those panels into a network where individuals can transmit disparate types of clean energy to their neighbors: the microgrid. But where the leading edge technology gets most exciting is with blockchain.

Blockchain has been one of the most talked about technologies over the past several years, with applications ranging from anonymous cryptocurrency transactions to the creation of secure ledgers for some of the world’s top financial institutions. Name any sector of industry, and chances are someone has recently dreamed up a way to introduce blockchain ledgers into the equation.

What blockchain offers that makes it so compelling is a truly decentralized approach to information exchange and security. Utilizing what’s known as “distributed consensus”, a blockchain is comprised by a network of nodes mutually verifying each “block” of data, making it unhackable and impossible to deceive.

The clean energy marketplace is an ideal use case for blockchain because of the massive volume of data associated with energy production and distribution. In fact, many oil and gas companies have already introduced private versions of the technology for their own back-end needs.

For the average residential solar panel owner, blockchain-secured trading platforms will relay the most current information possible, acting as a sort of neural network connecting all the different kinds of technology involved in the process. Solar panels, IoT devices, inverters, and smart controllers all talk via blockchain; when energy is traded from peer to peer, the command is logged on the blockchain ledger which in turn sends the hardware into action.

In short, blockchain provides just the kind of brainpower necessary to tie together all the different hardware and software that will make the clean energy marketplace a reality. In Part 4, we will discuss further how AI and IoT devices provide contacts between that brain and essential hardware in order to complete the picture.