Los Angeles County Trials Blockchain Platform for Sustainable Energy Trading

EVShare, an energy and transportation sector focused company, has begun the trial of a community energy sharing program in Los Angeles.

The venture, backed by $20 million in partner financing and $9 million award from the California Energy Commission, has now completed the preliminary work to trial the blockchain powered application for administering a local sustainable energy grid.

The platform depends on linking domestic solar energy network with electricity based transport system to develop a real-time energy market.

The objective is to link 50 households to a domestic grid which powers a group of electric run vans.

During trial, the energy sharing platform is powered by a blockchain platform created using RSK Bitcoin sidechain and RSK Infrastructure Framework.

The platform was built by EVShare’s parent company IOVLabs. The blockchain will store data related to solar panels, storage of energy, electric vehicles and charging framework.

The data will be used in a carbon credit trading market. Participants will receive tokens for carrying out activities for reduction of carbon footprint, including vanpooling, producing and using sustainable energy, among others. The token can be redeemed for electricity usage thereby encouraging a circular carbon credit economy.

The trial is rolled out in Bassett, a Los Angeles County. To participate in the trial, residents have to download the Green Commuter app.

Eduardo Javier Munoz, the CEO of EVShare, stated that the preparation for the venture was going on for several months. “The Energy Coalition, which is the leader of the project, has been engaging the community to commit to the project for over two years already.”

Munoz stated that the blockchain is a requisite to “register, certify and validate transactions and carbon credits between assets in an automated way through Smart Contracts.”

He further highlighted benefits such as rise in transparency, while “the use of blockchain makes processes significantly more efficient, to levels that are honestly unknown these days.”

RSK, being a smart contract platform, uses a pegged variant of Bitcoin (BTC) as native crypto token and is mined Bitcoin blockchain to leverage on security of the latter’s mining network.

The venture is well focused on government and enterprise collaborations, with a banking trial announced recently in Argentina.

The firm is also building a decentralized financial network for launching it as Bitcoin DeFi due to RSK’s link with the main network.

In energy trials across the globe, other blockchain platforms are being utilized. Similar trials are going on in Germany, Thailand, Japan and Austria. They are rolled out by several enterprises in partnership with domestic associates and authorities.

The venture led by EVShare is among the first such trials to be rolled out in the US and it is primarily focused on the use of solar energy by electric vehicles.