Smart energy app ideas: commoning energy infrastructure for distributed and clean energy uptake; commoning fleets of EVs

This article has been moved to here.

Before I go into detail about my ideas for commoning electricity grid infrastructure, other energy assets, fleets of EVs, and EV charging infrastructure, I’ll provide some background information. If you want to skip to the ideas, jump to the heading title “Ideas” — press the page down button on your keyboard 5 times. Please note that I still consider this article to be somewhat of a draft, and it has been subject to several revisions, and may continue to be revised.

Ideally I would like to build a distributed smart energy app with the Internet of Energy, an open-source platform for building smart energy apps, that is being developed on top of Holochain. See also this introduction, which in addition to introducting what the IoE is, addresses why it should be a better option, once developed, than centralized services or blockchain platforms. Additionally, see https://holochain.org/.

However, the IoE platform has only recently started development, so that would need to be built alongside the app. An app might be able to be built with a centralized model, and be ported over to the IoE when ready, if not yet. In addition to the possible apps listed here, others could include for providing a way to fund public energy infrastructure, such as for transmission and distribution networks, electric vehicle charging networks, renewable energy farms, electric vehicles as a service (with inspiration from Steer EV), and smarter and more interconnected grids. The apps might be able to be proprietary and private, but I think this would be less beneficial in the long-run, and it would make less sense for funding public infrastructure. As such, any organisation that may be responsible for the development of such commons energy infrastructure, assets, and services, would be best set up as a non-profit association, limited by guarantee, where all profits are re-invested into the business; or as a co-operative, where “economic benefits are distributed proportionally to each member’s level of participation in the cooperative” (Wikipedia).

Distribution and transmission electricity grid networks used to be typically owned by governments as a monopoly, but increasingly this is transitioning to ownership by private companies. In Australia, electricity distribution networks are owned by Transmission and Distribution Network Service Providers (TNSPs and DNSPs), which are owned either wholly by governments, a mix of government-owned corporations (with foreign or Australian state governments) and private corporations, or by private entities.

A helpful graphic of the electricity network companies in Australia that are members of Energy Networks Australia, is shown here:

There’s also a filterable list on the AER website here.

This is a list of the Australian TNSPs: Powerlink Queensland (QLD Government owned); TransGrid (NSW and ACT); AusNet Services (Victoria, public company with foreign state ownership by the Singaporean and Chinese governments, via state-owned corporations—Singapore Power (31.1%) and and State Grid Corporation of China (19.9%)); Electranet; and TasNetworks (Tasmanian Government).

TransGrid began as the trading name of the Electricity Transmission Authority which was established on 1 February 1995 as a statutory authority under the Electricity Transmission Authority Act 1994, as part of the break-up of the Electricity Commission of New South Wales.[2] The Authority was corporatised in December 1998, by the Energy Services Corporations Amendment (TransGrid Corporatisation) Act 1998, and TransGrid became the actual name of the corporation.[3]

In December 2015, a consortium called NSW Electricity Networks was the successful bidder for a 99-year lease of TransGrid’s transmission network[4] for $10.3 billion.[5] The consortium consists of: two Australian entities Spark Infrastructure (15%), the Hastings-managed Utilities Trust of Australia (20%), the Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (25%), and two Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (20%) and the Kuwait Investment Authority (20%).[5] State Grid Corporation of China was one of the other bidders, in a consortium with Macquarie Infrastructure Real Assets. The company’s bid was cleared by the Foreign Investment Review Board but was eventually unsuccessful,[6] possibly because of its government and military connections.[5]

From this page, the owners of ElectraNet Pty Ltd, trading as ElectraNet, are:

• State Grid International Development Asia and Australia Holding Company Limited—The international arm of the State Grid Corporation of China (46.56%)
• YTL Power Investments Limited—An investment company of YTL Power International Berhad (33.50%); and
• Australian Utilities Pty Ltd—As trustee for the Australian Utilities Trust (19.94%)

There are four distribution businesses in NSW: Endeavour Energy, Ausgrid, ActewAGL, and Essential Energy.

Endeavour Energy was leased in June 2017, for a term of 99 years, and a 50.4% ownership, to a consortium led by “Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA), and includes AMP Capital, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and Qatar Investment Authority. The NSW Government retains a 49.6% interest and continues to regulate safety and reliability” (Wikipedia, Endeavour Energy, The Treasury NSW Government).

Ausgrid was privatized in 2016 to an Australian-based consortium of AustralianSuper and IFM Investors, for a bid to the NSW Government at a sum of $16 billion.

The distribution arm of ActewAGL, Evoenergy, is a joint venture, owned equally between Icon Water, an ACT Government-owned corporation, and Jemena Ltd via subsidiary companies. (ActewAGL, archive)

Electricity networks have issues with constraints on network lines, which cause bottlenecks to supplying power where it is needed. Getting enough investment to strengthen these networks to reduce these constraints and support renewable energy is a major barrier to increasing the uptake of renewable energy, where renewable energy systems may range from utility scale and connected to transmission grids; to small-scale, embedded, behind-the-meter energy.

The State Grid Corporation of China has a considerable share in foreign grid entities, including in Australia. Concerns over potential geopolitical issues, and military, strategic and trade impacts, with a similar case, have been raised here, with the sale of a 99-year lease of Port Darwin to a Chinese company, Shandong Landbridge Group, which is owned by “Ye Cheng, a billionaire with close ties to the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China [4][5][6].”

How can we reduce the risk of investment in infrastructure, while also increasing necessary investment in it, in order to deliver net benefits long-term? We can distribute investment: making it widely available, while preventing ownership from becoming concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs, or foreign interests with military links. When ownership of assets becomes concentrated, then we lose control, and increase the amount of debt and work we have to do to regain control. See also this article by Warren Buffet, which includes an analogy to help understand the problem of net trade deficits resulting in increasing foreign ownership and trading income extra-nationally: “Here’s How I Would Solve the Trade Problem”, and this Seeking Alpha article with a summary and insights on that article here. By using globally available and distributed mutual credit cryptocurrencies that are asset-backed and stable in value, like Holofuel, the value of various goods and services can become stable, irrespective of location. This can help to lead to a balance of trade, while incentivizing an increase of production of goods, services, and trade, and more generally, a more prosperous, happier global society.

Ideas

One idea is rather radical, and would involve commoning of electricity grids, in order to harness efficient investment, management, planning, operation, and control of electricity grids and markets. Mutual credit currencies that are stable in value, and asset-backed by grid assets, could be used to pay grid asset owners (who operate collectively to manage the grid as a Sovereign Accountable Commons (SAC)) to use the services of the asset, similarly to how there are distribution and transmission network fees today.

It has been suggested to nationalize electricity grids, with the intention to deliver better public benefits. However, centralized, state-owned, monopoly ownership has been shown in history that it may not deliver efficient allocation of supply to match demand, compared to decentralized commercial markets.

Moreover, commoning with mutual credit currencies, similarly as applied with Holofuel and Holo, provides a potentially more sustainable, healthier, economic system for development, as compared to capitalism and representative democracies. It does this with distributed ledger technology, customizable validation algorithms for security of data and financial transactions, and distributes agency and incentivizes mutually beneficial outcomes for involved agents.

Commoning electricity grids (let’s call it CommGrid for short) could start small, such as with a distribution grid upgrade or extension at the end of a network, or broaden scope to include investment in embedded networks, or microgrids, since they reduce the need to upgrade grids to meet increasing peak demand.

Who is the target market for CommGrid? CommGrid would need to work with grid owners and the government in order to invest in the grid. Renewable energy developers are one target area of customers, since they need better grids in order to reduce risk and get a better return on their renewable energy investments. Commercial solar retailers who develop embedded networks are another.

Thinking more radically, it is possible to envisage solar retailers, developers and energy service companies (ESCos) owned and operated by a community, such as with or similarly to Power Club, Enova, EnergyLocals, and/or Amber Electric. This concept can be extended to running as a Sovereign Accountable Commons with unclosable carriers. Such SAC ESCos could encourage energy conservation; provide energy efficiency devices and retrofit services; install solar, batteries, or other energy storage and clean energy products; and be cogoverned in a distributed fashion.

Here’s a quote from this article:

Here’s some ideas: apps backed by asset-backed currencies with electric vehicle charging networks and renewable energy farms. In both these cases, these assets could be funded and collectively used-and-owned as a commons using the Commons Engine. I haven’t fleshed out or designed how any happs would work, but there are substantial benefits derived from using Holochain, and maybe also the Commons Engine. As mentioned above, benefits include transitioning to a fairer, more equitable economy, where people help each other more in a mutually beneficial, reciprocative way, rather than having extractive relationships where one benefits more than the other, leading to inequalities in power, influence, and wealth.

Resources for how a mutual credit cryptocurrency that is backed by productive activity may be designed include the following:

• https://medium.com/h-o-l-o/holo-fuel-economics-101-c9631d63014a
• Other resources detailed in another post discussing these ideas here: https://forum.holochain.org/t/draft-renewable-energy-generators-as-a-commons/1633

My problem is that I don’t have a lot of savings, only around $5k, so without further income and savings and/or investments, it seems impractically risky to pursue this, without investment, or finding a consulting project to work on remuneratively. Even a small investment early-on would be helpful, so that I could then do more R&D, and develop a white paper, website, and find a co-founder (which are needed to start a private company and seek further equity investment via Birchal).

So unless I can get investment to support myself with a fair and stable income, then it’s best to get a job, either employed or freelance, until I can save up enough to work on it for a while with funding myself, which could be after several years. Otherwise, I would have to try to get funding from other sources than my limited own limited savings, such as crowd funding, crowd equity investing (e.g. with Birchal), and/or with venture capital.

This insured crowdfunding model might also be useful, although it may be more useful for fiat currencies, including blockchain currencies, and is perhaps not so useful for commoning and mutual credit cryptocurrencies, which can be supported by Holochain.

There’s lots of other apps that are already implemented that could be implemented using Holochain as a backend, in order to harness its benefits of fully distributed p2p networking and computing, with ostensibly better scalability and security than the centralized client-server model and blockchains.

In addition to smart energy apps, think also of the following all running on Holochain:

• see all of these in various stages of development: https://github.com/holochain/apps and https://developer.holochain.org/docs/guide/built_with_holochain/, e.g. distributed web hosting, social media, etc.
• sharing economy apps like AirBnB (sharing accommodation), marketplaces (like eBay and Amazon), but with no or much less (depending on the business model) rent-seeking;
• public commons, goods and services funded by apps with mutual credit cryptocurrencies, rather than taxes or donation. See also Commons Engine, as well as insured crowdfunding and liberal radicalism.
• Food marketplaces direct between farmers and consumers, with food backing currencies. See Producer’s Market.
• Every other centralized app that runs over an internet network, whether or not it involves transactions, could be ported over to run on Holochain.
• commoning of manufacturing and the production of goods and services, with Producer’s Market above being an example for food. I wrote more about this here and here.
• Land-based currencies and apps (like marketplaces) for real estate, possibly with the aid of Startup Societies. A forum thread regarding this is available here.

Other than apps running on Holochain, there’s lots of innovation compiled here:

https://hackmd.io/0frQDyKKQX66Z8xcM7xb8g

I posted some follow up responses to this post:

• addressing how these ideas and proposals can complement Redgrid;
• that feedback and help to develop these ideas into successful businesses is welcome; and
• that I’m seeking buy-in from potential customers, partners and investors, in order to secure an income to fund development.