Call it a game of power, but researchers at Fudan University in China have officially filed a patent application describing a decentralized power plant that could allow parties to exchange unused electricity without an intermediary.
The patent outlines a system where power sellers and buyers are assigned as network nodes and can transmit requests for purchases or sales of electricity. Smart contracts later link a request and then execute transactions.
In the paper, the researchers clarify that solar energy is often generated in excess of demand in certain regions – explaining that " Families have no choice but unused solar energy is wasted because it has no direct way of exchanging electricity. "
The patent describes that a digital currency could be used to transfer the supply of electricity between buyers and sellers on the network – by elaborating " this idea can be reached in a public, private or consortium blockchain, and in this case, the system was developed on the IBM Hyperledger platform and on the Ethereum blockchain, to make the electricity marketable and shared within a community .
