Dutch firm ElaadNL taps IOTA technology for autonomous smart grid PoC

Dutch tech firm ElaadNL has announced that it is using IOTA technology for a proof-of-concept (PoC) to demonstrate “how smart grids can autonomously balance energy consumption.”

The PoC has been created at the ElaadNL test lab in Arnhem in collaboration with grid operator Enexis. The smart grid for electric vehicles will share data via IOTA Tangle, an open-source, permissionless DLT, and let the charging devices autonomously decide if they want to help balance grid load or not, without any human interaction. IOTA tokens serve as an incentive.

According to the official release, charging stations earn a small fee in IOTA tokens by charging electric vehicles at a slower speed or at an off-peak time.

“The grid in this PoC will connect all devices to a particular area of the grid, along with the transformer supplying energy,” it said. “If one or more devices lowers its energy usage, they receive a few tokens of the IOTA cryptocurrency. As a result, a self-balancing grid of smart devices communicating with each other outside of human interaction is created.”

Harm van den Brink, DLT expert at ElaadNL and Enexis, explained that the PoC demonstrates “a possible future electricity system,” which would allow sharing electricity and would be able to balance itself.

“We are demanding more energy at peak times, and when the sun is shining we will have a surplus of energy. This all should be dealt with in real time. Our solution is a first step in to that direction. We showed with our proof of concept that this can be done, although future development is required to actually put this in the grid,” he added.

Recently, Denmark’s state-owned energy company Energinet signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the IOTA Foundation to trial the IOTA Tangle technology in the internet-of-things (IoT) and energy market domains.