As part of the pebbles research project, Siemens, the regional utility Allgäuer Ãœberlandwerk (AÃœW) and their project partners are developing a local electricity market using blockchain technology. The parties launched pebbles’ electricity trading platform, bringing them one step closer to creating the first local marketplace for optimized electricity trading based on blockchain.
The platform will be utilized in in the town of Wildpoldsried in the Bavarian Allgäu region of Germany. Now, during the platform’s demonstration phase, private producers can use an app to market their electricity directly to local consumers without going through marketers or traditional grid operators. The market platform also supports flexible power from battery storage or controllable loads such as heat pumps or charging stations for electric vehicles. The blockchain technology, which forms the basis for managing market transactions, is designed to create end-to-end transparency and trust between users.
Consumers, also the customers, can define preferences for electricity purchases, such as the percentage and price for electricity from local photovoltaic and wind energy systems. With funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the goal of the pebbles project is to demonstrate that bottlenecks in the grid can be avoided through local energy and flexibility trading, therefore lowering the costs associated with the energy transition. Project partners Siemens, AÜW, grid operator AllgäuNetz, Kempten University of Applied Sciences, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) have jointly developed the platform, management systems and app, taking grid limitations, and production and load forecasts into account.
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