Companies working in the energy industry keep experimenting with innovative solutions in an effort to diversify resources and achieve efficiency and process optimization and streamlining. The best and most effective approach to accomplish those goals remains the blockchain technology.
The latest firm performing its operations in the energy sector that has decided to embrace the blockchain approach is American company Ameren, which announced via a press release on Thursday, March 28th, that it would be joining forces with Canadian software engineering business Opus One Solutions to assess the potential of the technology in the mentioned field.
An American Powerhouse
Ameren is a well-known company in the United States and other locations. It provides its services to approximately 2.4 million electric and 900,000 gas consumers in the market, and according to market value, it was in the top 20 of the gas and electric utility companies as of May 2018. It will now test blockchain in an attempt to provide “cleaner” energy.
The blockchain approach will be the main factor behind Ameren’s new initiative, called Transactive Energy Marketplace (TEM). It functions as a microgrid built using Opus One’s technology with the intention of improving supply and demand ratios.
“Identifying the value local distributed energy resources (DER) can provide to our distribution system and the customers it serves, helps inform how and where customers should invest in clean renewable power,” were the words of Ron Pate, Senior Vice President of operations and technical services at subsidiary Ameren Illinois, according to the press release.
Details of the Pact
The executive continued explaining the details of the alliance and the reasons why the company chose blockchain technology: “Transactive energy markets will ensure that distributed energy resources are compensated appropriately, for the services that they provide.”
The exact way in which Ameren plans on deploying the blockchain technology are not yet public, but the announcement comes in a moment in which energy providing firms throughout the world are shifting to the approach as they look to reshape the way they perform their operations.
Other Known Cases
Ameren is, naturally, not the first brand to experiment with blockchain and the distributed ledger. Earlier in March, Japanese company Marubeni established a strategic alliance with blockchain business LO3 in an attempt to promote automation and improve the efficiency of renewable energy solutions.
Before that happened, tech powerhouse Fujitsu revealed positive results of its trial involving the blockchain technology, thanks to the help and support of its ally Eneres, a Japanese energy supply company.
IoT (Internet of Things) platform Iota was the channel used to develop a Proof of Concept for an autonomous smart energy grid in the European area, most precisely, the Netherlands. It happened in February.
By Andres Chavez
