Solar Bankers to launch full-scale, blockchain-enabled smart grid project in Nigeria
Solar Bankers is happy to announce that it will launch a full-scale smart grid project using its blockchain-enabled P2P energy trading platform in Nigeria. We have signed an agreement for a pilot project with the Kaduna State Power Supply Company (KAPSCO) to deploy our P2P energy trading platform to the city of Kaduna in the north of the country. The project will connect 66 commercial and residential buildings in the Atiku Abukakar house cluster in a local smart grid infrastructure.
KAPSCO sees tremendous potential for local economic development in using blockchain technology to give consumers greater control over how they produce, consume, and monetise their energy. By giving individuals and communities power over the production, distribution, and exchange of their energy, we not only create greater economic independence but we enable the local community to participate more fully in the globalising economy. Our concept effectively turns individuals into energy entrepreneurs as it empowers them to sell any electricity they do not use on a local marketplace and thus creates an important source of additional income. In this way our project will stimulate local businesses and directly contribute to the tackling of a range of Sustainable Development Goals, including poverty reduction, improved education, and clean energy.
The beauty of the Solar Bankers system is that it produces significant efficiency gains that strongly incentivise growth in small-scale solar energy production. These efficiencies are generated by:
➔ using the blockchain technology to freely execute energy trades and allocate supplies
➔ enabling clean energy producers to sell excess energy
➔ reducing energy transportation costs by developing local grid structures.
Our P2P energy trading platform is based on the highly efficient and scalable SkyFiber blockchain technology. The trading platform runs over an online application that is linked to a household’s smart meter, which in turn is connected with other smart meters in the local network. The app is then able to monitor the electricity produced by each household’s various renewable energy sources and enables the exchange of electricity not used for personal consumption through a digital currency system. This creates a local marketplace for electricity that allows prices to respond very quickly to local availabilities and demand signals. Our solution is also unique in the sense that we provide a technology package that contains everything that is needed to set up and run a local P2P energy: from the smart meters, to the software for the trading platform, to the renewable energy installations.
With KAPSCO we have a local partner to help us get legal approvals, identify and contact households, and run operations for the project. We have received confirmation from Dr Abdulkarim Mayere, Managing Director/CEO of KAPSCO, that the utility company will finance the project and the local Kaduna ICT Hub will act as a local technology partner to provide expertise. We are currently working on delivering the smart meter infrastructure and blockchain-based trading platform, for which we are enlisting the help of our Turkish technology partners Asay Group. The pilot project has been vetted by the Ministry of Justice and has received approval.
As a next step we plan to use the pilot project with KAPSCO as the basis for an application for funding and assistance from development institutions like the World Bank or larger NGOs to expand the local smart grid infrastructure to the city and perhaps regional level. This could result in up to 50,000 buildings and households being integrated into various smart grids running on our blockchain platform and applications. If combined with the deployment of renewable energy installations, the environmental impact of such an expansion could be substantial. As in Nigeria electricity is produced on the household level by diesel generators, we estimate that if we can expand our project to the whole city district, we could replace up to 60,000 diesel generators with our clean PV devices. This could substantially improve air quality in the region and also largely eliminate the carbon footprint of energy production in the district.
Solar Bankers is excited to work on this opportunity to revolutionise the life of local populations in the African continent using our blockchain technology.
Originally published at https://solarbankers.com.
