Australia's blockchain based renewable energy trading company Power Ledger is exploring the Indian market. It offers its platform to BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL) to carry out a pilot project for a large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading trial.
Starting with a select group of solar consumers in some gated communities of Dwarka locality in Delhi, for the trial BRPL uses existing solar infrastructure of 5 MW to 6 MW and let residential owners of rooftop solar systems sell excess solar power to their neighbours, instead of letting it go waste or fed into the grid.
This P2P trading, according to Power Ledger, provides access to cheaper, renewable energy to the participants while also enabling prosumers to earn from their investment in solar assets. It has been working for BRPL by giving access to a cost-effective energy alternative during the times of peak demand pricing leading to increased efficiency and reliability of the power supply.
Power Ledger shares that going forward, the trial will be expanded to include blockchain-enabled solutions for group net metering, virtual net metering, electric vehicle charging and virtual power plant (VPP) applications. It claims the decentralized platform has the potential to become the standard for all distributed energy resource trading across Delhi.
BRPL's CEO Amal Sinha said blockchain based energy trading is a good idea for the Indian setting as it can help utilize renewable energy anywhere in the country without the need for a fully centralized grid.
Policymakers are waking up to realize the potential of renewable energy trading as it doesn't require any investment in terms of physical infrastructure and can be done on an individual level as well. Power Ledger points at Thailand being one of the countries that has identified this technology as a key component of its Power Development Plan. Another example is South Korea's Chuncheon city, which entered into a partnership with blockchain company Swytch to reward consumers for reducing carbon emissions (see Blockchain For Chuncheon City To Go Solar).
In October 2019, Malaysia's Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) launched a P2P energy trading platform pilot project with Power Ledger's help (see Malaysia Launches Solar Energy Trading Pilot Project).
"Although we've already initiated several successful P2P energy trading projects across the globe, this partnership with BRPL provides an opportunity to really scale to an enterprise-style application and provide a guide for policy development in Delhi," said Power Ledger head of business development and sales Vinod Tiwari.
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