The Australian government has announced that it will be giving out approximately $6m USD in grants for companies to develop blockchain based solutions to the power grid. This is an exciting expansion of blockchain technology outside of the financial industry and into other fields where it has previously been thought to be theoretically applicable, but not yet implemented.
The funding from the government is going to a variety of partners and organizations in order to achieve a broad scope analysis of how blockchain technology might be useful in the energy sector. The recipients include private companies, major Australian universities such as Curtin and Murdoch, and City Government of Fremantle for the sake of implementing the results of the research.
One major recipient, Power Ledger, caught my eye; their company as described by their Whitepaper employs a fascinating use of the blockchain to create a P2P energy grid powered by independent and distributed energy resources (DER). The system is designed to take advantage of distributed clean energy solutions and to allow the transfer of energy between systems across the grid according to need at any given time. It’s such a delightful application of blockchain technology and distributed economy; reading about how modern technology is being applied to create such efficient systems is a treat. Go check it out!