Dutch firm unveils the world's first autonomous self-balancing energy grid for EV's

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By Matthew Griffin Earth and Energy 16th March 2019

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

New powerful technologies are letting us revolutionise how we generate and deliver electricity, and autonomous, self-balancing energy grids are now a thing.

A little while ago I wrote about the US Department of Energy’s plans to create the world’s first autonomous energy grid, but now, it looks like the American’s might have to play catch up after Dutch company ElaadNL, which was founded by a number of European energy grid operators in 2009, announced they’ve “developed a Proof of Concept (PoC) for an autonomous, smart power grid for Electric Vehicles” that uses yet another “new” technology I covered, namely IOTA’s minerless blockchain tech called Tangle, that uses mathematical models rather than miners to create a blockchain-like system aimed at helping organisations tame the Internet of Things (IoT).

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As per the announcement, the PoC shows the ability of smart grids to not only consume power, but also generate it and then autonomously redistribute it amongst community members, and Tangle is the magic technology that brings the solution to life by letting the charging devices autonomously decide whether they’re needed to help balance grid load. Additionally people using ElaadNL’s electric charging stations can earn IOTA tokens by charging electric vehicles at a lower speed, or at an off-peak time.

“The grid in this PoC will connect all devices to a particular area of the grid, along with the transformer supplying energy. If one or more devices lowers its energy usage, they receive a few tokens of the IOTA cryptocurrency,” said the announcement.

“This proof of concept shows a possible future electricity system where energy is shared amongst neighbours and decentralized islands are capable of balancing themselves [without the need for human intervention]. We are using our electricity grid in totally different ways than we did 50 years ago, and we went from only consuming to also producing energy,” added Harm van den Brink, the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) expert at ElaadNL who led the project.

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Elsewhere, in January, Danish state owned energy company Energinet also announced it had expanded its partnership with IOTA to investigate the use of its technology in new areas. IOTA’s product offering is specifically geared to IoT, and Energinet is now looking for ways to create new solutions based on IoT “for emerging phenomena, such as green energy and electric vehicles.” Then in December 2018, Spanish renewable energy company ACCIONA Energía also announced its intention to use IOTA to trace and monitor electricity generation. ACCIONA and software startup FlexiDAO had been jointly working on the development of a commercial demonstrator that tracks the supply chain of renewable electricity generation from five wind and hydro facilities in Spain to four corporate customers in Portugal.

Source: IOTA

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as “The Adviser behind the Advisers” and a “Young Kurzweil,” is the founder and CEO of the World Futures Forum and the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures consultancy working across the next 50 years, and is an award winning futurist, and author of “Codex of the Future” series.

Regularly featured in the global media, including AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, RT, Viacom, and WIRED, Matthew’s ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of revolutionary emerging technologies on global culture, industry and society, is unparalleled. Recognised for the past six years as one of the world’s foremost futurists, innovation and strategy experts Matthew is an international speaker who helps governments, investors, multi-nationals and regulators around the world envision, build and lead an inclusive, sustainable future.

A rare talent Matthew’s recent work includes mentoring Lunar XPrize teams, re-envisioning global education and training with the G20, and helping the world’s largest organisations envision and ideate the future of their products and services, industries, and countries.

Matthew's clients include three Prime Ministers and several governments, including the G7, Accenture, Aon, Bain & Co, BCG, Credit Suisse, Dell EMC, Dentons, Deloitte, E&Y, GEMS, Huawei, JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, Lego, McKinsey, PWC, Qualcomm, SAP, Samsung, Sopra Steria, T-Mobile, and many more.