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Can someone explain how this works? It's not like they built a new grid in Brooklyn. I'm not sure why it's called a micro grid. Presumably if the house with the

by erentz 9y ago

Can someone explain how this works? It's not like they built a new grid in Brooklyn. I'm not sure why it's called a micro grid. Presumably if the house with the panels sends its excess into the regular grid they get credits or money for this from the local electricity utility. But to make this trading across the grid happen is there some market system that allows them to say, hey this electricity generated over here is bought by this consumer over here? If so that seems like it has nothing to do with block chain and is just an offering of the local utility and/or the energy market regulator. Actually, it kind of sounds like all this company is doing is being a middle man to collect money from customers who want to feel green without adding any value. (I may have this completely wrong, I am genuinely curious how this makes sense though.)

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
It's an ETH coin scam. Swoop in, act as middle man, skim off the top of ever transaction, use puff pieces like this article to pump up the value of your coin, then cash out. As a rule, anytime "blockchain" shows up someplace where it makes no sense someone is pulling a scam somewhere.
- twohlix_ 9y ago
  Especially with a centralized authority being LO3. I don't get the point of using a blockchain in this case, who is confirming the transacations? What is the incentive for confirmation? Also if LO3s customers are just buying from the grid, are they paying LO3 on top of what they pay their utility? If so what is the value added by LO3 at all?
  - nikanj 9y ago
    The value is added to LO3's shareholders, not the users. This is a common theme with companies nowadays.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    Right. Because if LO3 is the one who is auditing and moving money around, why do we need a Blockchain at all? Can’t a database they admin do the same thing?
    - agumonkey 9y ago
      Well a block chain is inherently auditable isn't it ? I thought it was an open tech, not a closed system.
      - azinman2 9y ago
        But is that something people really need? To be able to audit their electricity transactions via the blockchain? Someone is going to have to write a tool (this is well beyond the average person), and that tool could easily be flawed. The meters themselves also aren't easily auditable... so many points of failure why is a blockchain the thing that matters?
        agumonkey 9y ago
        I thought the tooling was already there, you would "just" push your transaction on the network and let it be.
        azinman2 9y ago
        What tooling exists for me to aggregate my electricity costs against anonymous wallet hashes and see the unique amounts to each neighbor?
        agumonkey 9y ago
        Disclaimer: never used BC. I meant BC and ETH are generic data structure, you put anything you want in it and retrieve later to create a new transaction.
        9y ago
- ShannonAlther 9y ago
  The article even mentions that the utility provider ConEd in Brookyln offers green energy, so there's almost no point in LO3's services. Not that I'm an expert in electrical grids, but I'd rather the actual grid coordinate a changeover to renewable sources, because these actors just sound like they're selling a scam that'll end with a class-action lawsuit someday.
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    But this company allows homeowners to sell their electricity in a competitive market instead of accepting the monopsony price of the electric system.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  Not sure how charging a transaction fee makes it a scam. That's what every company that provides a market platform does. While it's entirely possible that the blockchain serves no functional purpose in this case that couldn't be done equally well with a web server, it's also possible that they've structured the company so that some parts are done automatically, by a smart contract on the blockchain, resulting in the company having less control than it would otherwise have. Scepticism is a good thing. Making serious allegations based solely on speculation is not.
roymurdock 9y ago
I think you're mostly right, but it's hard to tell. The company doing this, LO3 Energy, is installing one piece of hardware - a "Tag Element" - next to a participant's existing energy meter. The Tag measures how much excess electricity a PV/Solar panel generates. The Tag sends that information on LO3's blockchain ("Transactive Platform") - essentially crediting whoever produced the electricity, and giving another participant the option to buy this "excess energy" directly from the PV/solar installation. The end result is that someone can feel like they've bought the exact electrons from the participant with the PV/solar installation, while in reality, they've just bought some more energy from the grid. I'm not sure how the pricing scheme operates, and if there are different prices for dirty grid energy vs renewable neighbor microgrid energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsKQfjbYNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsKQfjbYNg I'm also not sure how or why the project is marketing that this grid could withstand a power outage or extreme weather as they are not installing direct physical lines between the PV/Solar producers and other microgrid users. Presumably the entire system would go down if the main utility went down - the PV/Solar guys could power their own homes, but there would be no way to get that electricity to other consumers.
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  Under New York State's net metering rules residential solar panel owners get 1:1 retail credit for excess power put back onto the grid. The only way I could see a seller coming out ahead by selling to a neighbor vs selling to con-ed would be if the neighbor is willing to pay above retail. And even in that case NYS has solar power collectives and private third party energy producers selling solar power through the grid.
- eigenvector 9y ago
  It's true that you can't really "buy" specific electrons from a micro-producer.* But providing a platform for the exchange can be beneficial, because it allows the producer to monetize their activity in a way that might not otherwise be possible, creating the financial incentives for them and others to (further) invest in creating more production capacity. Of course, for this to be useful the revenue obtained through the platform has to be higher than what you could get without it. This is the same idea as Google and Facebook signing power purchase agreements with wind or solar farms. Goog/FB of course get their power from the grid and not a direct link to the wind/solar farm, but by creating the financial instrument of the PPA (typically at a higher than market price) they allow the producer to finance their project which can make the difference between it being built or not. It's a lot easier to finance a project when someone has committed to buy all your power at a fixed price for 20 years vs the uncertainty involved in the spot power market. * this is true even at a conceptual level without getting into the physics of how electrons don't actually get transmitted from a power plant all the way to your house
smuemd 9y ago
I am not sure how the LO3 system works in particular. But I have been involved in helping create a still experimental system that enables exactly the use case you described: make trading across the grid happen by allowing producers and consumers to agree on the amount and origins of the electricity in circulation at any given point in time. https://drive.google.com/a/stromdao.com/file/d/0B0DEak0BnhBfeXBlQXVqZlFqaW8/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/a/stromdao.com/file/d/0B0DEak0BnhBf... https://github.com/energychain/StromDAO-BusinessObject https://github.com/energychain/StromDAO-BusinessObject
- zoernert 9y ago
  Personally I think we are missing "peer authority" in the Brooklyn grid. As long as we just electricity vs. money exchange is dealed with there is no real added value. From my point of few a Business Object (as linked) for the energy blockchain drives new services and general business transformation better than just redo something based on Hype-Tec.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Many commenters are missing two big advantages of this system. (1) This is a micro-grid. "Microgrids minimise the amount of energy lost through transmission; as an estimated 5% of electricity created in the US is lost in transit, microgrids provide an efficient alternative. The Brooklyn microgrid also economically benefits those who have installed solar panels." http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurethe-brooklyn-microgrid-blockchain-enabled-community-power-5783564/ http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurethe-brooklyn... (2) The market is peer-to-peer, so prices for buying and selling aren't dictated by a monopoly and monopsony power which could ripoff both the regular homeowners and solar-panel owners, but rather a competitive market. (3) The grid is p2p and thus is disaster-resilient. Think back to Hurricane Sandy and the 2003 NY State blackout.

by erentz 9y ago

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago

It's an ETH coin scam. Swoop in, act as middle man, skim off the top of ever transaction, use puff pieces like this article to pump up the value of your coin, then cash out. As a rule, anytime "blockchain" shows up someplace where it makes no sense someone is pulling a scam somewhere.

twohlix_ 9y ago
Especially with a centralized authority being LO3. I don't get the point of using a blockchain in this case, who is confirming the transacations? What is the incentive for confirmation? Also if LO3s customers are just buying from the grid, are they paying LO3 on top of what they pay their utility? If so what is the value added by LO3 at all?
- nikanj 9y ago
  The value is added to LO3's shareholders, not the users. This is a common theme with companies nowadays.
- azinman2 9y ago
  Right. Because if LO3 is the one who is auditing and moving money around, why do we need a Blockchain at all? Can’t a database they admin do the same thing?
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Well a block chain is inherently auditable isn't it ? I thought it was an open tech, not a closed system.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      But is that something people really need? To be able to audit their electricity transactions via the blockchain? Someone is going to have to write a tool (this is well beyond the average person), and that tool could easily be flawed. The meters themselves also aren't easily auditable... so many points of failure why is a blockchain the thing that matters?
      - agumonkey 9y ago
        I thought the tooling was already there, you would "just" push your transaction on the network and let it be.
        azinman2 9y ago
        What tooling exists for me to aggregate my electricity costs against anonymous wallet hashes and see the unique amounts to each neighbor?
        agumonkey 9y ago
        Disclaimer: never used BC. I meant BC and ETH are generic data structure, you put anything you want in it and retrieve later to create a new transaction.
        9y ago
ShannonAlther 9y ago
The article even mentions that the utility provider ConEd in Brookyln offers green energy, so there's almost no point in LO3's services. Not that I'm an expert in electrical grids, but I'd rather the actual grid coordinate a changeover to renewable sources, because these actors just sound like they're selling a scam that'll end with a class-action lawsuit someday.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  But this company allows homeowners to sell their electricity in a competitive market instead of accepting the monopsony price of the electric system.
Jabanga 9y ago
Not sure how charging a transaction fee makes it a scam. That's what every company that provides a market platform does. While it's entirely possible that the blockchain serves no functional purpose in this case that couldn't be done equally well with a web server, it's also possible that they've structured the company so that some parts are done automatically, by a smart contract on the blockchain, resulting in the company having less control than it would otherwise have. Scepticism is a good thing. Making serious allegations based solely on speculation is not.

roymurdock 9y ago

I think you're mostly right, but it's hard to tell. The company doing this, LO3 Energy, is installing one piece of hardware - a "Tag Element" - next to a participant's existing energy meter. The Tag measures how much excess electricity a PV/Solar panel generates. The Tag sends that information on LO3's blockchain ("Transactive Platform") - essentially crediting whoever produced the electricity, and giving another participant the option to buy this "excess energy" directly from the PV/solar installation. The end result is that someone can feel like they've bought the exact electrons from the participant with the PV/solar installation, while in reality, they've just bought some more energy from the grid. I'm not sure how the pricing scheme operates, and if there are different prices for dirty grid energy vs renewable neighbor microgrid energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsKQfjbYNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsKQfjbYNg I'm also not sure how or why the project is marketing that this grid could withstand a power outage or extreme weather as they are not installing direct physical lines between the PV/Solar producers and other microgrid users. Presumably the entire system would go down if the main utility went down - the PV/Solar guys could power their own homes, but there would be no way to get that electricity to other consumers.

bradleyjg 9y ago
Under New York State's net metering rules residential solar panel owners get 1:1 retail credit for excess power put back onto the grid. The only way I could see a seller coming out ahead by selling to a neighbor vs selling to con-ed would be if the neighbor is willing to pay above retail. And even in that case NYS has solar power collectives and private third party energy producers selling solar power through the grid.
eigenvector 9y ago
It's true that you can't really "buy" specific electrons from a micro-producer.* But providing a platform for the exchange can be beneficial, because it allows the producer to monetize their activity in a way that might not otherwise be possible, creating the financial incentives for them and others to (further) invest in creating more production capacity. Of course, for this to be useful the revenue obtained through the platform has to be higher than what you could get without it. This is the same idea as Google and Facebook signing power purchase agreements with wind or solar farms. Goog/FB of course get their power from the grid and not a direct link to the wind/solar farm, but by creating the financial instrument of the PPA (typically at a higher than market price) they allow the producer to finance their project which can make the difference between it being built or not. It's a lot easier to finance a project when someone has committed to buy all your power at a fixed price for 20 years vs the uncertainty involved in the spot power market. * this is true even at a conceptual level without getting into the physics of how electrons don't actually get transmitted from a power plant all the way to your house

smuemd 9y ago

I am not sure how the LO3 system works in particular. But I have been involved in helping create a still experimental system that enables exactly the use case you described: make trading across the grid happen by allowing producers and consumers to agree on the amount and origins of the electricity in circulation at any given point in time. https://drive.google.com/a/stromdao.com/file/d/0B0DEak0BnhBfeXBlQXVqZlFqaW8/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/a/stromdao.com/file/d/0B0DEak0BnhBf... https://github.com/energychain/StromDAO-BusinessObject https://github.com/energychain/StromDAO-BusinessObject

zoernert 9y ago
Personally I think we are missing "peer authority" in the Brooklyn grid. As long as we just electricity vs. money exchange is dealed with there is no real added value. From my point of few a Business Object (as linked) for the energy blockchain drives new services and general business transformation better than just redo something based on Hype-Tec.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

Many commenters are missing two big advantages of this system. (1) This is a micro-grid. "Microgrids minimise the amount of energy lost through transmission; as an estimated 5% of electricity created in the US is lost in transit, microgrids provide an efficient alternative. The Brooklyn microgrid also economically benefits those who have installed solar panels." http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurethe-brooklyn-microgrid-blockchain-enabled-community-power-5783564/ http://www.power-technology.com/features/featurethe-brooklyn... (2) The market is peer-to-peer, so prices for buying and selling aren't dictated by a monopoly and monopsony power which could ripoff both the regular homeowners and solar-panel owners, but rather a competitive market. (3) The grid is p2p and thus is disaster-resilient. Think back to Hurricane Sandy and the 2003 NY State blackout.