The energy sector has been the focus of harsh criticism regarding cryptocurrencies and many people and media have seen that factor as a reason to attack cryptos.
Some evidence of this can be seen in news from various countries, such as China, where mining is discouraged due to its energy consumption.
It is true that due to mining, large amounts of energy are consumed that can be compared to the entire expenditure of countries like Argentina. But it is also true that, for example, the banking system or gold mining consume much more energy than Bitcoin and have never been the focus of criticism for it.
Beyond these comparisons, it is also true that within the crypto ecosystem solutions are being developed to reduce energy expenditure or to improve energy utilization.
One of them is Energy Web. Although it is not the key to reducing energy consumption, nor is it specifically oriented to this point, it focuses on a striking aspect: energy trading.
Get your safety gear and lightning rod ready, because today we’ll walk through the electrifying concepts and ideas that Energy Web has to offer.
What is Energy Web?
Energy Web is a global non profit organization that seeks to accelerate the use of a customer centric, low-carbon electricity system.
To do so, it uses the enormous potential of decentralized open source technologies.
This project was launched in early 2017 by Energy Web Foundation.
EWF is a foundation that originated from a partnership between Rocky Mountain Institute and Grid Singularity, two renowned entities in the energy field.
For its first few months, their network leveraged Ethereum public Kovan network, but in November 2017 they launched Tobalaba, their dedicated EW test network.
Among its objectives as an organization, we can highlight:
Building a central infrastructure and shared technology for your proposals
By December 2019, the Energy Web team developed Energy Web Decentralized Operating System (EW.DOS), the digital DNA of its network.
Simply put, it is an open source stack running on a decentralized network, which is maintained by some of the world’s most respected energy companies.
In EW.DOS you can find Energy Web Chain and several SDKs (software development kits), which have two main use cases:
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- Tracking clean energy and carbon emissions.
- The use of distributed energy resources to increase grid flexibility.
In 2020, EW-DOS began to be implemented by Austrian Power Grid.
Accelerating the adoption of commercial solutions in the energy sector
By working directly with energy market participants, their idea is to build and deploy specific commercial solutions through EW-DOS.
Additionally, they are responsible for supporting, convening and advising market participants on how to create commercial and customer value with blockchain and other digital technologies.
Fostering a community
As a non-profit organization, it seeks to foster the largest sustainable ecosystem around EW-DOS and decentralized open source technology. Therefore, they promote a community by:
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- Training and education on decentralized technologies.
- Connecting peers across the industry who are affected by similar challenges and pioneering decentralized solutions.
How does Energy Web work?
Energy is a resource that cannot be stored, so some of the electricity that is produced may be wasted.
Therefore, electricity should be used immediately and go to homes or factories near the producer who has the electrical need.
Against this backdrop, Energy Web seeks to open the electricity market to all.
Therefore, it allows you to connect devices that generate electricity (solar panels, heat pumps, batteries, etc.) and connect them to its blockchain.
There, users can easily sell their electricity.
Similarly, the blockchain manages the flow of electricity and sends it to the nearest location where it is needed and where the highest “bidder” is.
In this sense, its purpose is to circulate electricity from the producer to the consumer by the shortest route.
It is also interested in enabling as many people as possible to become energy producers in order to reduce the production of fossil fuels.
Its main proposals
Energy Web Chain
In June 2019, six months before launching EW-DOS, they released Energy Web Chain. It is the first public, open source, enterprise-grade blockchain tailored to the energy sector.
Today, it is a leading choice in the industry for being a fundamental digital infrastructure on which Blockchain based dApps can be developed and run.
It is certainly open to all utilities, users and devices. In addition, it uses a virtual machine (virtual machine) identical to the public Ethereum.
As a result, developers can start writing smart contracts and dApps with little knowledge about it.
Its blockchain features high scalability, low transaction costs and reduced energy cost, thanks to its Proof of Authority consensus.
For this reason, the “authorities” or validators that are part of this blockchain are chosen by the foundation.
At present, every company in the energy sector, such as Shell, Vodafone, Vestas, Volkswagen, EDF, among others, has its own validator.
Energy Web Token (EWT)
EWT is Energy Web’s native token and is designed to support partner companies’ applications.
Its primary function is to serve as a “gas” to pay transaction fees on its blockchain to exchange information.
In addition, it compensates validators through fees and massive rewards and is used to pay for services that optimize and improve dApps (such as Oracles or Bridges).
Similarly, it serves to access public services for a predetermined period of time. Its total supply is 100 million EWTs, of which only 30 million are in circulation.
Regarding how you can acquire them, they can be obtained through exchange with dollars, euros, pounds sterling and Bitcoin.
So much for our electric adventure through the trails of Energy Web, we hope you found it useful!
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