Blockchain Is Powering the New Energy Landscape, Centered Around People

Peter Davies is the Founder & CEO of Verv, a team of machine learning experts in the energy sector who have created a blockchain based peer-to-peer renewable energy trading platform that allows those with renewable technologies to sell excess energy to their neighbors at an affordable cost.

The new energy landscape will be centered around people.

Not only are we going to see the rise of the prosumer, we're going to see local energy microgrids which are able to operate autonomously from the national grid become a thing of their own, while the advancement of machine learning and blockchain technology emerge to benefit global energy inclusion.

Renewable energy technologies like solar panels have changed the energy model from one that was a one-way street to one that enables consumers to generate and use their own energy to power their homes.

These energy consumers become active prosumers who can produce, store and sell their own energy within their community, thus improving access to affordable green energy.

Microgrids powered by new technologies will be fundamental to the new energy economy as old centralized energy grids struggle to keep up with energy demands.

Using blockchain technology, these smart microgrids of the future will connect individual energy producers and consumers to form peer-to-peer energy trading networks, leading to more social energy inclusion in communities.

New technology has developed new networks of producers and consumers and completely new business models for buying and selling energy.

The use of machine learning and AI can add another layer of intelligence to that information, using detailed household consumption profiles and predictions around the supply and demand of energy to establish optimal times and prices to buy and sell surplus energy to other energy users within a peer-to-peer network.

Prosumers will benefit from being able to sell their excess energy to their neighbors, thus also incentivizing the uptake of renewables thanks to increased ROI.The paradigm shift in the new energy landscape is clearly not just about the shift from non-renewable to renewable energy, but one shifting from central energy providers to a distributed network of prosumers.