Got it.

I am quite aware of the many others that know more about blockchain than I do, even though I have read about them for close to two years now. I am always happy to see that when I try and explain what it is, quite quicky some people grasp the concept of peer-2-peer transactions. Responding with a: 'So we can do peer-2-peer energy trading as well then?' to me is a sign they got the basics for any further discussion.

The peer-2-peer energy use case is by far the most discussed use case within the energy business, but also the most obvious one. In an industry build on selling energy, it is the obvious translation from the current business to blockchain. The world is still in search for the 'Killer App' which combines blockchain to an energy related use case. Having seen many variations, I'm sure we have only been prodding in the tip of an iceberg. A long road of discovery is still ahead of us.

Introduction Blockchain

This is by far one of the best introductions for Blockchain I have seen in a long time:

With all the buzz surrounding blockchain, it has also become the terrain of the fortune seekers who claim to know it all, charging high consultancy fees while visibly struggling to clarify the basic concept behind bitcoin in their presentations or Youtube video's.

What have I been up to?

For the past few years I have been involved in district heating at Eneco. An industry I was not really aware of before I started at Eneco. I have learned a lot and have been able to apply much of my engineering and startup experience here. Besides district heating I have entertained myself with the concepts of Blockchain, finding many interesting applications for energy as a bonus. On top of that, I moved into a new home about a year ago, learning more about the actual benefits of solar panels, smart thermostats and home automation.

District Heating

District heating is gaining a lot of attention in the Netherlands as more and more we realize the era of natural gas is coming to an end. Currently district heating supplies around 300.000 homes in the Netherlands with heat. The rest of the 7.000.000 are mostly supplied natural gas. With gas phasing out, there is a huge potential to make heating of Dutch houses more sustainable. The two most discussed solutions being district heating (mainly urban areas) and heat pumps.

New home

Last year we moved into our new home and we still love it! It is properly isolated, has solar panels to generate solar and is fitted with a low temperature heating system. The panels supply just shy of our annual consumption. Tuning our central heating system for the use of low temperature supply we used about a third of what a Dutch household uses on average in natural gas.

Toon

Working at Eneco and moving into this new house finally allowed me to get our Eneco smart thermostat, the Toon. The main benefits in the first few weeks were that my girlfriend also was made aware of energy. I still consider that a great plus that people with no direct interest in energy or a tech background can understand at a glance what is happening with their energy consumption and production.

The Homey from Athom

Homey

The Toon can trigger lights and smart plugs, but the engineer in me wanted to be able to do more. We recently installed a Homey, which is a great extension to our/my home automation efforts. This is still a work in progress and I will have to install quite a few switches in the wall sockets, but the scalability allows me to do this one switch at a time.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a concept I came across on blogs about two years ago now. Back then, blockchain was only associated with Bitcoin, which is some sort of currency. Default for most people at the time was that blockchain was also some sort of currency. Understanding the implocations of a distributed database, the peer-2-peer mechanism and the cryptography, I knew I needed to apply this to energy. For the past two years within Eneco I have done some interesting little project on the side to explore blockchain and its use cases with a strong focus on energy.

Planning next step

I am also pondering a next step within Eneco, with plenty of opportunities to apply the entrepreneur and engineer in me on. District heating is about to grow exponentially, home automation is a field Eneco is positioning the Toon in which is also a personal interest. Or blockchain, for which I see a bright future and where I have learned a lot about in two years. Or perhaps I will find a way to combine all of the above, who knows?

Stop Digging

Science has never been more clearer than this piece from McKibben:

"But as the new math makes clear, keeping fossil fuels in the ground is the only realistic approach. What’s unrealistic is to imagine that we can somehow escape the inexorable calculus of climate change. As the OCI report puts it, “One of the most powerful climate policy levers is also the simplest: stop digging.” That is, after all, the first rule of holes, and we’re in the biggest one ever."

From: Recalculating Climate Math

Be sure to check out more of his work.

The Cloud Making Machine

It could be me, but most large, industrial chimneys make me think of this Techno-Jazz album from one of my musical heroes, Laurent Garnier his album The Cloud Making Machine. Most chimneys are associated with pollution, even though they are often used to simply cool some process and the smoke you see is 'just' energy being wasted - still not something to be sustainably proud of.

The album just makes me happy to think of, associative thinking is strong. How can we use this for the better? How can we make sure these negative elements such as chimneys can be associated with something positive? As good as Laurent's album is, it does not make chimneys a good thing.