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Blockchain-Fueled Open-Source P2P Energy Trading System Wins Energy Hackathon

Last Updated October 1, 2020 1:43 PM
Lester Coleman
Last Updated October 1, 2020 1:43 PM

Following a weekend of solution seeking, collaboration and competition, the highlight of the Hackenergy 2016 event was a blockchain-fueled peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading system called EcoCoin, which grabbed top honors.

Brendon Geils of the U.S., Simon Appel of Germany and Hodge Hodgson of Germany) built the blockchain-fueled P2P energy trading system on the open source Hyperledger blockchain managed by the Linux Foundation to win the hacking competition.

International Turnout

Hackers from Germany, Spain, the U.S., the U.K. and the Netherlands attended the event, held in Groningen, an Hanseatic student city in the Northern Netherlands, and there were nine presentations in total at the end of the event.

The hackathon was sponsored by ENGIE Nederland, Energy Academy Europe, the city and province of Groningen — and backed by Groningen’s IBM Client Innovation Center (CIC), according to a press release .

“It was a great event, bringing the energy transition where it belongs: with people who want to work on our future, and a great way to connect knowledge, innovation and business,” said Maurits Alberda, manager entrepreneurship and innovation at Energy Academy Europe. “We look forward to welcoming new energy business ventures and to hosting a following edition!”

A 25-Hour Project

Similar to other projects that have been worked on for over a year, such as the one being built by LO3 Energy and ConsenSys in the U.S., EcoCoin was constructed in 25 hours as the team spent the first-day brainstorming and formulating the idea.

“The first night we spent the entire night brainstorming, then by 11 a.m. the next day we conceived the idea,” said Geils. “At that point we had 25 hours left to hack — and we did it in the next 25 hours.”

“The use cases are various,” stated Hodgson, “One is that we can bring individual producers and consumers of energy, whether that be solar or be that from combined heat and power or whatever source together, and the other one is that we can white label the tool for intermediaries like the utilities in order to have their foot in the door and keep customer retention.”

It was unsure at press time if the team would take the cash prize or alternatively opt to enter the startup accelerator program called Energy Venture Lab/Startup Fast Track, backed by energy multinational ENGIE, Groningen University/VentureLab North, Hanze UAS and the province of Groningen.

Also read: Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation opens doors to the public blockchain space

Future Hackathons Ahead

The team plans to attend Ultrahack 2016 in Helsinki in November, an international hackathon league with winners from more than a dozen other hackathons in Europe competing for a share of over m in investment funds. This was arranged by Hacked in Groningen Hackathon League in partnership with Futuretournaments Oy in Finland. The Ecocoin team will receive a grant for travel, accommodation, as well as tickets to attend the Slush festival after Ultrahack, one of the largest tech events in the Nordics.

Richard Kastelein, from Stichting Hackitarians who organized the event, said Ecocoin’s project was amazing and deserved to win as they really had a working prototype at the end of the event.

“There is a lot of fresh innovation being done in the area around peer-to-peer energy trading, blockchain, AI and Iot,” said Kastelein. “And these digital nomads really grabbed onto the concept, ran with it and nailed it.”

Best design was won by Hack the Truck, best technology was won by Joris, and best commercial concept was won by UU-IoT with their James Project — and all received in cash prizes for their work.

Image from Shutterstock.