No one enjoys paying their electricity bill. It keeps going up and up, with a bunch of new nonsense fees thrown on top every few years. What’s worse is that many parts of the world still rely on dirty fossil fuels to produce this energy. By now we have all heard about the potential of solar and other renewables to shake up the energy market, but you might not know that blockchain technology also has its place in the mix.
Several startups are developing projects that integrate blockchain and solar energy. Their ideas range from developing alt-coins for trading and incentivizing power production to using smart contracts for administering energy transactions.
SolarCoin
SolarCoin is an eco-minded cryptocurrency that aims to incentivize solar power production. The coin was launched in 2014 and hopes to drive the generation of 97,500 terawatt hours worth of solar power over 40 years. It originally used a proof-of-work system for verification but has since switched over to a proof-of-stake-time system because it is more environmentally friendly. Anyone can mine the coins, from individuals to solar farms. For every 1 MWh of electricity generated (and verified by a third party), the producer recieves one SolarCoin. Solar farms wanting to earn extra income by generating SolarCoin coins for the power they produce don’t have to pay anything to participate, and SolarCoin does not take any of the power; it merely provides the coins as an incentive to produce clean energy.
Granted, one SolarCoin is worth under 7 cents at the time of writing, but then Bitcoin was only worth about 30 cents when it was the same age. The hope is that enough people will have confidence in the coin to give it real value and allow it to be used in transactions. While Bitcoin famously takes large amounts of electricity to mine, SolarCoin incentivizes a responsible use of energy.
ElectricChain, an affiliate of SolarCoin, is also working on a number of blockchain- and solar-based projects. Its main aim is to “build the world’s largest open scientific solar…