The Energy Web Foundation (EWF) announced that the sonnen Group (sonnen) has unveiled a new virtual power plant (VPP) in northeastern Germany that leverages the Energy Web Chain and the EW Origin suite of software development toolkits (SDKs). A network of distributed residential energy storage systems comprise the VPP, which is used to absorb surplus wind generation and thus avoid curtailment of renewable energy by charging the batteries when wind energy is abundant.

In Q1 last year, Germany curtailed a record 3.2 TWh of wind energy. In 2018 overall, Germany curtailed a total 5.4 TWh of renewables.

An application built using EW Origin matches forecasted wind energy oversupply with available storage capacity in the VPP. The network operator in northeast Germany reports the anticipated surplus energy. In response, sonnen's VPP makes an offer to absorb some of that surplus. If the network operator accepts the offer, financial settlement occurs on the EW Chain using EW Dai, a stablecoin digital currency that mirrors conventional Dai on Ethereum. Settlement is essentially instant and nearly free, with the EW Chain built around negligible transaction costs.

The Energy Web Chain and the EW Origin SDKs are both part of the Energy Web Decentralized Operating System (EW-DOS), an open-source stack of 'blockchain-plus' software and standards.

"EW-DOS focuses on two of the most important use cases for the world's evolving electricity systems: enhancing renewable energy markets and leveraging distributed energy resources (DERs) to improve grid flexibility," explained Micha Roon, EWF's chief technology officer. "sonnen's innovative project straddles both of those worlds: using a blockchain-based approach to reduce curtailment of large-scale wind energy by tapping into the available capacity of distributed batteries."

The cost to transact with and settle DERs - including distributed batteries, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and other customer-sited devices - has traditionally been prohibitive, and not worth large grid operators caring about. This new sonnen VPP overturns traditional thinking. Blockchain-based settlement for DER-provided grid services becomes a scalable solution that makes even the smallest DERs and smallest grid services worth tapping into. Longer term, it provides a pathway to a DER-rich future, in which not just a single VPP of distributed batteries but millions or even billions of DERs are providing grid services.

"With a flexibility market for renewable energies and the automatic exchange of supply and demand via the digital exchange 'EW Origin,' we are realising the next step towards a smart grid that can deal much more flexibly with fluctuations from renewable energy," says Jean-Baptiste Cornefert, Managing Director of sonnen eServices. "Virtual power plants such as those from sonnen are the technical building block for this power grid that has been missing up to now and can help to ensure that less green energy is lost."

Energy Web Foundation | https://energyweb.org

sonnen Group | https://sonnengroup.com/