Power Ledger, an Australian blockchain startup that lets customers trade electricity freely, entered a partnership with Japan’s second-largest electric company. The Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) has 164 power plants and employs over 30,000 employees.
“The fact that KEPCO is exploring the Power Ledger platform as a solution is a massive indication that the industry has accepted that change is inevitable. The energy industry is traditionally conservative, and rightly so. When they implement changes consumers are relying on them to be certain it’s the right decision,” said David Martin, managing director of Power Ledger.
The partnership comes in the form of a trial run with home-based power generation. Homes in certain communities will produce low-cost energy and customers can monetize their renewable installations by selling off whatever they don’t use back to the grid through a peer-to-peer system.
KEPCO’s dream is to eventually bring power generation to the consumer level, allowing people to have their own “virtual power plants” that they can run and maintain to provide electricity to one another.
Only 10 homes will take part in this trial project, which will take place in Osaka. KEPCO will monitor the activity so that the participants can fine tune the operation before moving to a larger scale.
“The trial will give material feedback around the technology and opportunity for adoption. We’re excited to partner with KEPCO to implement our platform in Japan and bring Power Ledger one step closer to our goal of democratizing power,” Martin added.
Power Ledger already has seen some level of success in Australia, where it received government funding to kick-start a project in its home country.So far, trials have been run in conjunction with Orion Energy and Thailand’s smart park.
After experiencing a long dip this year, Power Ledger’s POWR token jumped 12.50% once it made the announcement in Japan.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
