[scott_ci]

There's a recent podcast about this and blockchain + energy sector in general: https://epicenter.tv/episode/174/ Why blockchain? It enables peer-to-peer buying and selling of electricity (no middle man), which becomes more interesting as the grid itself is becoming more decentralized with solar, etc. Imagine being able to buy and sell electricity directly between you and your neighbors. Lots of questions about how this is metered & controlled, but it seems promising.

[foepys]

> (no middle man)

Just because you cannot go to a miner's office doesn't mean that they aren't a middle man. The illusion of direct payments is simply untrue and you need to trust that there will never be more nodes from people that want to fraud the whole system than there are trustworthy ones. You trust complete strangers with your money that you can never meet and never complain about. Worse, you can't even sue them because they are most likely not in your jurisdiction and/or anonymous.

[cashmonkey85]

If Ethereum actually worked as an autonomy trustless network (which is what the project claimed to be) then there would be no middle man. But Ethereum is just vaperware and a marketing project

[sanswork]

How does a blockchain make that setup easier? You need to a system in place to track who is selling to who so if you have that it's just as easy to have it do bank transfers as it is blockchain ones.

Do you also imagine there would be wires running between each set of properties? If not you still need a third party to manage the centralized distribution network in which case you're not going to sell directly to your neighbors you're going to sell to the grid.

[scott_ci]

I imagine a marketplace with a ledger of electrons and money, with smart switches and meters that directly interact with this marketplace.

One interesting idea is having certain energy tagged as "green" energy, like wind generated, which some people might be willing to pay more for.

How do you prevent fraud (bypassing the meter) and who still pays to maintain the grid? Not sure. Is this really more efficient than a private / gov run system? I don't know. Blockchain interacting with real physical assets always seems murky to me.

[bkanber]

From the wikipedia entry for "blockchain" [0]

> Blockchains are "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically."

Blockchains are exactly what they're looking for, they solve the problem perfectly. By design, the blocks in a blockchain are a redundant, scalable, unhackable, cryptographically secure ledger transaction (in theory!).

From wikipedia again:

> All blockchains are distributed ledgers but not all distributed ledgers are blockchains.

Ethereum is a blockchain implementation that has programmable contracts. If you're designing a system like this, and need it to be out in the public and self-governing, it makes sense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

[sanswork]

Could you give me a practical example of how you would use one to solve this problem that couldn't be just as easily solved without one?

[davidgerard]

There are none. The only practical example where a blockchain does things a centralised database doesn't is a Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency.

(Even then, proof-of-work mining naturally recentralises, as we see with Bitcoin. Ethereum claims to be planning to move to proof-of-stake, but there's no working implementation or date for this.)

[haddr]

I wonder how they justify the use of proof of work to maintain consensus. Wouldn't it consume a significant amount of the electricity generated by those solar panels?

[SirensOfTitan]

Proof of stake (PoS) is certainly the future for consensus. Ethereum has a built-in proof-of-work difficulty ramp up already started (a time bomb) and has had plans to move to PoS since the beginning.

[skybrian]

I'm guessing there's wasted electricity that solar panels generate at inconvenient times? If the power is "free" (not being used for anything else) at least they can mine Bitcoins.

[sanswork]

Bitcoin miners fall behind the curve fast enough that if you aren't running them full time with cheap electricity you are losing money.

[scott_ci]

the plan for ethereum is to switch to proof-of-stake, but that has definitely not been figured out yet. I could also see a more private blockchain supporting stuff like this. Maybe it's not open to anonymous participants, but is still more distributed than a single company.

[SirensOfTitan]

I find movement to PoS perhaps the most important milestone toward large scale adoption of Ethereum or any cryptocurrency-related technology. PoW just isn't feasible for large scale deployment: way too much energy is wasted for consensus.

[Moshe_Silnorin]

Ethereum burns ~1 million dollars of electricity per day. But they seem to be on the way to moving to POS.