Ovo energy Ltd has just invested in Electron, a company that uses Blockchain technology in its distributed gas and electricity platform as the UK moves to a more intelligent power grid. There is no centralised register of all the electricity and gas meters in the UK. Because of this, it can take two to three weeks for a customer to switch their utility services from one utility to another. Electron aims to reduce this time from days to “mere minutes”.
There is increasing demand from households to use electricity from renewable energy sources and corporates too, as they try to reduce their carbon footprint. Therefore, there is a need to be able to track the provenance of the power supply and generation, which is an ideal use for Blockchain technology, offering transparency and traceability.
According to recent research from Infoholic Research LLP, the use of Blockchain globally in the energy market is expected to expand significantly. The market was calculated to be $210million in 2018, and is expected to grow to be worth $3.4billion by 2024.
