The energy grid of the future.
In the past 10 years,
how many times have you seen a solar panel installation on a personal dwelling,
a windmill on a country farm,
advertisement for geothermal energy possibilities in a new housing development?
These are called distributed energy resources or DERs.
You're witnessing the proliferation of DERs.
You're indeed seeing energy production decentralization.
We're also witnessing the growth of major end-use electric devices.
A significant one is electric car,
another is a major development in Internet of Things,
IoTs and the advances in smart homes.
How do they manage the diverse demand at the user level,
to the decentralized production enabled by the abundance of DERs?
In the last lesson,
we added a production layer on smart contracts.
In this lesson, we add Grid+ that is
an accounting layer or Dapp platform for
the energy ecosystems on the smart contracts layer.
Shown here are four phases of the energy supply chain: production,
transmission, distribution, and retail.
Of these, Grid+ focuses on innovating
the energy retail sector with the integration of the blockchain technology.
There are opportunities for modernization,
improving efficiency, updating payment system,
and cost cutting for the end-user.
Field experts suggest that about 50 percent of
the end-user energy cost is not for electricity but for the administrative warheads.
Grid+ aims to minimize this with better technology and make
electricity grid cost effective, reliable, and robust.
On completion of this lesson,
you will be able to discuss the need for a smart energy grid,
explained architecture of the Grid+ system,
and explain the working of a Grid+ system.