There are many areas such as power exchange, safety of power plant, charging of electric vehicle, and emission trading in energy field, where blockchain is going to be used most actively.
Smart Nuclear Power Plant and Enhanced Alarms for Accidents that is based on IoT (Internet of Things) and blockchain took home the grand prize at ‘Nuclear Power Ideas Exhibition for College Students’ that was held by National Research Foundation of Korea on the 4th of January.
This idea, which was proposed by Park Jin-woo, who attends Pohang University of Science and Technology, operates nuclear power plant and maintenance through automated system by using IoT and protects data that is collected into a central operating system with blockchain technology.
This idea can also be used for large-scale plants such as coal thermal power plan and LNG power plant. Rather than being used for just protecting operating data, this idea can also reduce number of breakdowns of facilities and equipment. Sensors that detect safe operations of power plants look for any abnormal operations in real-time through multilateral certification.
If a sensor or a part operates abnormally due to hacking or breakdown, other equipment detects such unusual operation and verifies and corrects it automatically through certified data. This idea can prevent millions of parts, which make up power plants, from getting hacked or breaking down at the same time.
There are also examples of using blockchain technology to charge electric vehicles for the first time. Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) started developing charging stations for electric vehicles based on blockchain technology since last year. This project, which is called ‘Establishment of Foundation for Blockchain Service Platform’, encrypts and cumulatively records breakdowns of transaction that occurs every time whenever a car is charged to prevent transactions from being modified or counterfeited.
While verifying validity of using Big Data to charge electric vehicles and carrying out demonstrations, KEPCO is planning to apply blockchain technology to its electronic procurement system at the same time. Eventually, it is going to apply blockchain technology to entire businesses such as demand response management and P2P (Peer to Peer) power exchange.
Emission trading, which is emerging as a new energy finance market along with new climate regime, cannot be ignored. There was an issue in March of last year that marked a history on convergence between emission trading and blockchain technology. International certified emission reduction trading that is based on blockchain technology was concluded for the first time during a board of governors meeting by IETA (International Emission Trading Association). This conclusion makes convergence between new certified systems and virtual currencies that were born through development of ICT and virtual goods from energy fields into reality. It is expected that this conclusion will create opportunities for general people to participate in emission markets that were operated exclusively by certain businesses.
CPE Cell, which is a member of IETA, recently announced its plan to establish a cryptocurrency exchange that utilizes certified emission reduction at Bern, Switzerland. Certified emission reductions that are converted into cryptocurrency through blockchain technology will be exchanged. National Spanish carbon finance ICO fund and CTX, which is a certified emission reduction exchange for England and Australia, will be participating in a process of establishing this exchange. This cryptocurrency exchange will start transactions starting from the second half of this year when administrative procedures are expected to be completed.
Staff Reporter Cho, Junghyung | jenie@etnews.com