Spanish Electric Utility Company Uses Blockchain to Track Consumption Habits

Iberdrola, the Spanish public multinational electric utility company, based in Bilbao, has claimed to have executed a project that uses the blockchain technology to track the supply and consumption of the energy. The development was in order to confirm that their consumption patterns are 100% renewable. The report first appeared in a local news outlet called Europa Press.

During the first test, the power company tracked the renewable energy delivered from two wind farms and one power station to banks’ offices located in Basque Country and the southern city of Cordoba.

The company has made use of an open source blockchain platform called Energy Web Foundation. This platform has been known to be designed for the regulatory, operational and market needs of the energy sector. This first experience in accrediting the renewable origin of the energy supplied in real time has been developed in association with the financial firm called Kutxabank. The technology can trace the source of energy provided by Iberdrola, from the generation assets to the point of consumption.

The ‘blockchain’ technology allows assigning the assets that supply energy to the point of consumption and, even, establishing a hierarchy of priorities in the sources of origin. It also eliminates intermediaries since the smart contracts under which they work are self-executing. So, the technology simplifies the overall process, removing costs. It also gains acceptance from everyone regarding privacy.

The multinational corporation highlighted that this technology contributes to lower its carbon footprints in addition to providing an efficient, flexible, transparent and cost-saving process of issuing guarantees of origin (GoO). A GoO labels electricity from renewable sources to provide information to electricity customers on the source of their energy. Guarantees of origin are the only precisely defined instruments evidencing the origin of electricity generated from renewable energy sources.

For its part, Kutxabank is “a new opportunity” to continue deepening the sustainability criteria that guide its actions, since it has been developing various operations both directly and indirectly for years, with the aim of minimizing its environmental footprint.

Iberdrola isn’t the only company to work on blockchain in Energy Sector. The Department of Energy in the United States has recently granted, a reported, $4.8 million for university research into blockchain. German multinational Siemens has also collaborated with Energy Web Fountain to promote the decentralized app in energy sector.