We know about how blockchain technology is revolutionizing the peer to peer transfer of value, creating immutable and transparent records and changing many aspects of our lives in ways that are simply revolutionary.
But there is no human for that matter, that doesn’t use electricity.
In fact, most blockchains survive on the misuse of electricity. And most of this electricity is generated from fossil fuels, a phenomenon that speeds up the degradation of our environment.
Can Blockchain be used to provide affordable renewable electricity for all?
Well, Eloncity proposes to do just that!
Let us find out how
The History of Electrical Engineering
From the time Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek Philosopher discovered static electricity at around 600 BC, electrical engineering has undergone many revolutions to become one of the most comprehensive engineering feats accomplished by humanity.
However, electrical possibilities remained an intellectual curiosity for millennia, until the 17th century when scientists like William Gilbert, Otto Von Guericke, and Robert Boyle started publishing works on electricity.
Closer to the present, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America conducted extensive research on electricity, often selling his possessions to fund his research.
Though clear distinction doesn’t exist, Sir Francis Ronalds is reputed to be the first electrical engineer. He created the first electronic telegraph and documented how the world would be revolutionized by electricity.
Through his work, engineers in the 19th Century, including Michael Faraday and George Ohm, continued with more research.
The proliferation of Electricity Use
The adage that human revolution is most pronounced in times of strife is true for electrical engineering too.
During the two world wars, electrical engineering saw unprecedented innovation, especially with the advent of the airplane, radio communication, and eavesdropping technology.
Of current, most people cannot fathom living without electricity for powering homes, running industries and also for running communication devices.
The challenges with Current electrical supply
Everyone in the world currently uses electricity. However, there are very many challenges associated with electrical supply. Here are just a few.
Complex and expensive supply networks
In the supply of electricity to far-flung townships and villages, governments are often faced with the conundrum of lighting up homes and laying the infrastructure capital expenditure on poor populations or simply leaving these poor folks in the dark.
However, despite all this, the electrical supply network is one of the most expensive engineering undertakings for all humanity.
Increasing Unaffordability of electricity
It is an open secret that electricity is expensive in modern times.
In fact, studies show that it is now gobbling up about 10% of all the income of the bottom 20% earners in the US.
Couple this with the fact that about 600 million Africans are still not yet connected to electricity and the problem starts to look more real and urgent.
Electricity loss
Electrical loss due to the resistance of the networks used in the supply of electricity runs to around 6-10% of all electricity produced.
Natural Calamities
If this infrastructure is destroyed by floods, typhoons, tornados, and landslides among other natural calamities, they often take forever before being repaired, to the detriment of already fragile micro-economies in these areas.
Disruption of electricity can also happen due to surges in demand, especially for prolonged cold seasons and heatwaves.
Environmental Challenges
There are many types of electricity, but here, let us light up nuclear and fossil fuel energy. These are the two types of electricity that are the most used in the world.
They are the main course of pollution in the world. Fossil fuel energy is cheap. However, it comes with a heavy price on the carbon emission that we are all trying to fight.
It is therefore not sustainable, and we need to find alternatives sooner rather than later.
It is not easy to excite innovation in the area of renewable energy onto national grids due to the technical difficulties and legislative requirements.
Centralized exploitation
Another problem with the centralized supply of utilities like electricity is how they are targeted for opaque billing when corrupt and bloated regimes need to acquire revenue to run their governments.
If electricity can be decentralized, not only will it become cheap in the long run, it will also give poor people their voice and power of choice and self-determination in a very important aspect of their lives.
Why Blockchains have made the situation worse
Proof of Work
Blockchains have introduced wasteful consensus algorithms too, and bitcoins block mining was a deliberate attempt to secure the blockchain through proof of work at the expense of environmental considerations.
GPU Mining
The blockchain world is re-engineering the blockchain technology in a bid to remove mining centralization, and GPU mining is now being re-enabled, hence increasing the number of computers that will be doing random work and expending even more electricity.
Eloncity’s decentralized energy
So what does Eloncity propose? How can a blockchain related solution solve the problem of electrical supply?
Decentralization of renewable energy
Eloncity envisions a way of creating a distributed and blockchain based community driven and localized direct current electricity in a bid to herald a frenetic proliferation of renewable energy technologies.
This will be achieved using the following technologies, working in tandem.
The Energy Distributed Ledger
The system will provide a platform where immutable and transparent records of energy transactions will be kept on a blockchain within the community.
The blockchain will also enable the tracking of electricity provenance to enforce non-fossil fuel generation and foster innovation towards renewable energy and a deliberate movement towards de-carbonization.
The Eloncity BESS system
One may ask how multiple little contributions of renewable energy can be relied on to give a good smooth flow of electricity. Eloncity proposes to achieve this through the use of an intelligent network of batteries known as the battery energy storage system (BESS).
This network will flatten the intermittent supply and harmonize the local supply vs. demand. It will mitigate the need for expensive mains ancillary services like ac/dc conversion and transmission.
Establishment of a Direct Current grid
Direct current is cheaper, simple and straightforward than alternating current.
Most renewable energy is available as direct current.
By proposing to receive it as is, transmit it, store it and avail it as direct current, Eloncity proposes to provide electricity in the simplest and cheapest form to the poorest and most far-flung of the world's populations.
Prerequisites to the success of the Eloncity Energy Model
What is needed for this to happen?
Enabling Regulatory framework
An open market policy will be required to ensure that oppressive policies are replaced by an enabling regulatory framework to drive innovation and community based electrical generation and supply.
Community planning and implementation
A new renewable energy destiny will be proposed to micro-communities, and the members of these communities will adopt managerial and participatory roles in the sustainability of the Eloncity power initiatives into their cultures and social fabric.
Possibility of Self-Funding
Self-funding will get a new meaning in the proposed Eloncity modus operandi.
The blockchain will mobilize revolving loan funds that will be used to install the set-up of the projects, with the community using the energy savings for bills and active renewable energy generation to pay back the loan and help the money to revolve to the next project.
Future State of Electrical management using Eloncity
Eloncity does not propose an overhaul of electricity supply. Rather, it provides a complimentary and cheaper method of bringing the world’s unpowered or energy starved populations to a reliable and cheaper alternative for electricity supply.
The blockchain based project will use Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to regulate the electricity generation and demand dynamics.
The Roadmap for Eloncity
For the last four years, Eloncity’s pioneers, led by Andy Li, the founder, have been working to develop the technologies that will be used and testing the decentralized model for direct current power creation, transmission, storage, and supply.
The technology they propose is now known, even though their whitepaper is not yet out.
However, the first micro-grid will be fully commissioned in 2018 Q3, right after the ECT token sale, with increasing development of technologies for full adoption towards the winter of 2022.
Final Thoughts
Is the Eloncity vision grand?
Yes, and it involves the coordination of many interested stakeholders to promote the generation, sale, distribution, usage, and resale of direct current renewable electricity on a micro-community level, using blockchain technology for management of transactions and energy source provenance auditing.
Can they succeed?
The good about Eloncity’s direct current blockchain based electrification model is its dogged insistence on the micro-economic participation as a complete unit of implementation that will eventually tie with the larger integration once adoption of the technology becomes widespread.
Is there greater good?
Hell, Yes!
This technology proposes the promotion and eventual insistence of decarbonized, green and renewable energy and the restriction of the use of fossil fuel or nuclear energy.
If there ever was a good combination of innovation and care for the environment, the Eloncity project is just it.
Website
Eloncity Group
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