Blockchain technology and smart contracts have the capacity to outsmart current energy management and transaction systems.
Blockchain technology has a variety of applications and as we all know a huge potential. Smart contracts are getting more popular as the time goes by as tokens with different functions are being developed.
In an energy grid, there are tons of generators and consumers connected to it, and in order to control the amount of energy consumed and generated we need power meters. But in order to establish a financial transaction between a consumer and a generator we use a lot of intermediaries, which makes the process inefficient and expensive. A viable solution could be interconnect the signals sent by power meters to a descentralizad platform and enable energy trading at real time using blockchain technology and a specialized token with smart contracts, which can add up transmission, distribution and capacity prices at real time.
Another huge potential is keeping track of renewable-energy certificates with blockchain technology, which now are fundamental for any electrical system in the world. Instead of writing the signals of power meters in a data base, and then send it to a bunch of brokers and intermediaries to establish and verify the transaction, we could easily write this signals in a blockchain and make a lean transaction.
I know it's not that simple, but I see some potential for the future of energy trading in this field, as energy management and trading is a continuos and complex process, were a lot of intermediation takes place and therefore final users pay more.
A more detailed article by the MIT Technology Review in the Following Link:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609077/how-blockchain-could-give-us-a-smarter-energy-grid/