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transactive grid is a uh is a joint
venture between
sure can you hear me okay is a joint
venture between consensus and low three
energy I think you all know who
consensus is uh low three energy is an
energy uh development firm what we're
doing is uh building micro grids uh
small versions of utility grids that can
operate uh alongside or separate from
the larger utility
grid so there's really good reasons uh
to want to build microG grids uh first
and foremost the um the cost of
renewable energy is actually reaching a
point where it's competitive with
centralized energy but more importantly
um things like this happen Hurricane
Sandy came through New York a couple of
years ago knocked out big chunks of the
utility grid you can see that most of
lower Manhattan was down during that
time except for this segment which was
up and running so the reason that
happened is that uh this section
actually had its own generation and
could separate from the utility grid and
run on its own its own power
I think John's going to speak
next maybe I'll just grab this um so uh
in our efforts to sort of build the the
Brooklyn micr grid uh we started
interacting with uh community members in
the Park Slope and guanas uh
neighborhoods of Brooklyn and this is
Martha she's been in the community for
40 years uh that's her PBR array on her
rooftop and she actually has a surplus
she she produces more uh electricity
than she consumes um and so what we
wanted to explore as we were building
the micr grid was is there an
opportunity to allow Martha to actually
transact um peer-to-peer potentially
within the micro
grid and so this was uh actually the
sandbox that we identified within the
community where we're building the micro
grid on a street called President Street
and it's a really cool street because
half of the on one side of the street
you can see Martha's house and a bunch
of her neighbors and they've got really
big uh really cool solar arrays and then
in in the corner there you can see what
part of Brooklyn um that's located in
and then on the other side of the street
um are their neighbors so these are
potential consumers um and so so this is
a concept where Martha and her side of
the street can become prosumers and uh
their friends and Neighbors on the other
side can become consumers within this uh
within the
sandbox uh and so I just want to give a
bit of cont context with respect to the
Renewable Energy Credit market and how
that works in the United States um so
essentially right now you can buy uh
what's known as a wreck and a wre is
essentially an attribute um that that
attests to a megawatt of renewable
energy that's generated by some uh
source and so that could be like a wind
farm in Idaho or a solar farm in Texas
and so that uh facility generates a
megawatt and in doing so it is issued a
renewable energy credit
which it can then sell on and so what
you'll have is utilities um purchasing
renewable energy credits to satisfy
state requirements for green energy now
the problem is often times these wrecks
then get sold on again uh and so you're
double counting the value of that uh
sort of green energy um and so uh that
was one of the first initial problems
that we identified with this system um
the other problem is it's kind of a meta
system um yes the facilities that gen
you know that wind farm in Idaho is um
producing green energy and that does
have a net positive effect on the global
environment but that doesn't actually
mean anything at the local community
level in Brooklyn where uh uh residents
of that community may actually be
purchasing those wrecks from third party
providers so what that means is that uh
the electrons that are actually produced
off of that wind farm uh that you're
buying your green energy from don't ever
actually reach you so uh energy produced
in the neighborhood within your uh local
micro grid actually has the potential to
make it uh to your house uh so there's
less loss in transporting that energy um
you know transporting energy is actually
pretty lossy especially when uh summer
comes along all the air conditioning
turns on and uh the lines get hot and
start
sagging um the thing that's really
necessary to do some of this is data and
a lot of this data can be provided by
smart meters
so those Smart Meters uh and the concept
of pulling this uh pulling the macro gr
down to the micro uh brought us to this
idea of transactive
grid uh and so I'll just talk a little
bit about sort of the current iteration
of of of the Prototype and so the smart
meters then effectively become oracles
where in essentially you can tokenize
the consumption profile and so you can
represent essentially proxy electrons
with a token um and so in this example
we've got Martha and her
neighbor um and so her smart meter she
produces a surplus her neighbor can then
purchase that
Surplus um and so this is important to
realize because physics tells us that
the electrons that Martha produces from
her PV array will go to the nearest load
so the nearest load is probably her
neighbor's
refrigerator um and so the transactive
grid is essentially the the layer the
business Logic on top of which this sort
of transaction Can Can
Happen um and so this kind of a system
uh now gives consumers a choice they can
choose to uh purchase sort of renewable
energy credits from third party
retailers um or they can choose to now
purchase uh effectively renewable energy
credits you know in the form of a token
from their neighbor
directly so the important thing is that
um you know we're looking at this as an
evolution of utilities uh don't get us
wrong recks are incredible things and
actually re have done a lot to drive
down the cost of distributed generation
Renewable Power around the world uh but
that's a market that's ready for
evolution uh it's a market that you know
distributed generation the cost of
actually installing distributed Power is
coming down so much that you know there
is a potential to do it a different way
so this is an evolution of this works on
top of the existing utility structure
we're not trying to displace any
utilities at this point
um so
talk so in the back end we're building
so um consensus is is building the smart
contract foundation for this uh for this
project and so what we have is as John
mentioned the Smart Energy meter can act
as an oracle that will actually create
the these energy tokens uh once uh it
measures that uh electrons have been
produced by the
PV and so this goes then to to uh uh
Martha who can then sell these tokens
potentially to her neighbor and uh so
the neighbors would then consume the
tokens so you can have uh
so you have the neighbors um smart meter
will then sense that she's using energy
and then can uh uh destroy the tokens
from there so right now we have uh
custom token contracts and uh we're
currently working towards uh replacing
them with uh uh with the standard token
contracts that that were discussed
earlier
this is kind of
self-explanatory we arrived at ethereum
pretty quickly for all the obvious
reasons um and so so all of this sort of
um brings us to this concept of a
community energy Market sharing economy
um and and so certainly we've seen the
rise of the sharing economy play
prominent role certainly Uber Airbnb Etc
and and we think the community energy
Market sharing economy has some
foundational components so that's
tokenization effectively what Christian
just described um peer-to-peer markets
which so peer-to-peer transactivity is
inherent to distributed consensus
systems
um and we think the rise of the prummer
will be uh another foundational element
to this economy wherein um folks can
purchase PBR arays and they can actually
produce they have generative capacity um
rather than just being sort of consumers
in this oneway relationship with the
utility uh it's actually a pretty
important concept to understand because
not only is there value in the
production of energy uh on the grid but
there's also value on the reduction of
energy so prosumers can not only produce
energy that then gets used by themselves
or their neighbors but they can also
reduce the energy that's being consumed
so in essence you can tokenize the value
of a megawatt and a negawatt the the uh
absence of that
use so this would come together in uh or
this is coming together in the Brooklyn
Micro grid as a community Esco uh this
is a a borp a public benefits
corporation uh and it runs as a
nonprofit that then transacts the energy
or sells the energy back and forth to
the community um from the people that
are producing energy to the people that
are consuming the uh the energy in the
future uh maybe I'll just talk real
quick about future Milestones um so
there's this concept of smart meter
proliferation and recently New York
State um announced that in the coming
year there will be upwards of five or
six million Smart Meters installed
throughout the state um and this is
significant because um it's a it's a
substantial upgrade um to sort of the ex
existing infrastructure and it will give
us much richer data sets so much more
functional Oracle if you will um and and
this seems to be the case globally um
smart met
will be a reality all over the world in
the very near future and then so that
iPhone uh display image is is how we
envision um ultimately the user
interface something very easy um we
don't Envision an interface where um
consumers or prosumers or users are
bombarded with a ton of options and and
so something that looks like a trading
kind of interface uh instead we want to
make it very simple so that you can just
sort of set um uh your system to the
things that you care about so in this
case you know you've got the dollar sign
so maybe you're more interested in
maximizing your financial benefit or
maybe you're more interested in you know
maximizing environmental benefits or
Community benefits Etc and so the system
can then adjust accordingly um and we
feel this is a critical component going
forward so that you'll have a sort of
beneficent sort of automated Google
driving car type system that manages
your Energy Efficiency life
essentially so the potential we see in
the future uh and something that we're
working on now is the ability to
actually control grid infrastructure uh
across um the ethereum network using
blockchain technology this is a really
interesting infographic that um shows a
lot of the equipment that's connected uh
and you know transporting information
back and forth across the utility grid
um you know there are obvious benefits
to this from a security perspective um
there are also benefits that could be
had um from an equity perspective as
communities start to own a bit more of
their own
assets uh I think Christian's going to
speak to
this I
guess okay so so this could be uh a
potential UI like a dashboard where you
can see um exactly what benefits you're
getting how much uh uh you
buying from each neighbor for instance
uh so you can see there you have a
little leaderboard going on there where
where
U uh Na neighbor 3 is in the lead and so
this is kind of what we want to present
to the user to abstract away the the
underlying market so so in the in the uh
uh on the back end on the contract layer
this would actually be tokens being
created and destroyed uh the token
implements the standard contract
interface so they can be traded on on a
on an exchange like ether X for instance
and so that's going to be at the back
end and it's going to be visualized as
as this you know nice easy to consume UI
and and also as as Lawrence mentioned
you would be able to set it based on
these high level values like I I want to
you know I want to save money I want
more green energy I want to buy from my
local community
Etc right so um the amount of energy
that people are actually consuming using
could save or could buy across this is
probably less interesting uh you know
from a dollar perspective so the intent
is to connect when it gets down to the
consumer level uh connect us through
reputation uh into social networks uh so
that we can actually provide some of the
things that people care about other than
you know the few dollars a month they
might have saved or generated uh across
the
system so this is the core team we've
been working on this thing probably
about uh seven eight months
now and do we have time for
question any questions
yeah
okay oh question back here
sorry uh yeah you can so we're looking
at other ways that uh that you can
collect the information without a smart
meter um smart meters are becoming
pretty ubiquitous but uh there are also
uh quite a few Technologies out there
that can that can approximate that it's
easiest to use the utilities meter
because the utility is supplying your
energy they're actually billing you
against what happens on that meter so
our network is obviously going to be as
good as
that another
question
yes what's the name again can you repeat
it yeah maybe show us after
sounds good great all right thank you so
much thank you
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