TEPCO joins global energy blockchain organization Energy Web Foundation

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO) announced in a press release CoinReport received it has joined Energy Web Foundation (EWF), a non-profit organization whose mission is to fast-track the commercial deployment of blockchain technology in the energy sector.

TEPCO joins TWL (Technical Works Ludwigshafen AG), Centrica plc, SP Group, Elia, Statoil ASA, Engie, Stedin, Sempra Energy and Royal Dutch Shell plc. in supporting EWF.

Thanks to this support, EWF, which is a partnership between the Rocky Mountain Institute and Grid Singularity, has raised $2.5 million in a first round of funding.

An independent, U.S.-based nonprofit organization, the Rocky Mountain Institute is focused on driving the efficient and restorative use of resources, while Grid Singularity is a blockchain technology developer specializing in energy sector applications.

Blockchain, said the release, can be employed to minimize the cost of utility bills or the requirement of working capital in wholesale market gas or electricity transactions. Moreover, the technology can play a game-changing part in the energy sector by enabling millions of energy devices like solar PV installations, HVAC systems, batteries, electric vehicles, water heaters, etc. to transact with each other at the distribution edge while assisting grid and utilities operators in integrating renewable energy capacity at a much lower cost.

Hirokazu Yamaguchi, executive general manager, Global Innovation & Investments at TEPCO, said, “Distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar, wind, and electric vehicles are a growing trend in Japan as well as the rest of the world.”

“We believe that blockchain technology has the potential to play a significant and critical role in the transition to a more secure, resilient, cost-effective, and low-carbon distributed energy paradigm, and that joining EWF will help us to offer new and improved services to TEPCO customers.”

EWF is building an open-source IT infrastructure and targeting to drive the most promising use cases into proof of concepts and commercial applications. At the same time, the organization is incubating an ecosystem of application developers, and cooperating with standardization bodies and regulators to help in deployment. EWF is seeking partnership with other technology providers keen on backing the open-source approach of eradicating energy market entry barriers.

Image via press release