3 ms·

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 parti

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
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
It seems to me the benefit would be to remove the monopsony purchasing power that the traditional electricity systems holds over ordinary buyers and sellers, by allowing other homeowners in your area to bid on the price.

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

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

It seems to me the benefit would be to remove the monopsony purchasing power that the traditional electricity systems holds over ordinary buyers and sellers, by allowing other homeowners in your area to bid on the price.