Microgrids, the sharing economy, and the environment

[Peter1469]

Microgrids, the sharing economy, and the environment


The sharing economy is picking up steam. The new target: local energy sharing through microgrids. It will take business away from utilities and give us a better chance of surviving an attack on our grids (to include natural events).

Earlier this year, an innovative start-up, LO3 Energy, successfully combined blockchains with a microgrid in Brooklyn, New York to create what is perhaps the first ever neighborhood electricity market where households equipped with solar panels can buy and sell energy without going through a utility.

Here’s how it works. Using LO3’s app, which wirelessly communicates with the household electric meter, homeowner A can buy electricity either directly from homeowner B or from the local utility company. Once purchased, the electricity is then transferred via microgrid from homeowner A’s solar panels to home B. Likewise, when homeowner B is using less power than he needs at any given moment, he can simply sell the excess to one of his neighbors.


This sort of localized energy trading caters to the needs of both cost-conscious households as well as those committed to consuming energy in an environmentally sustainable fashion. For this reason, blockchain-enabled microgrids are attractive from both a free-market and green-energy perspective. Just as Uber and Airbnb are disrupting the taxi cartels and hospitality industry, microgrids and blockchains present the opportunity to expand consumer choice, lower sky-high electricity prices, and help integrate renewables seamlessly into America’s energy mix.


This new trend dubbed, “the energy sharing economy,” should be a huge boon for consumers and the environment. But government policies written to favor massive utility companies could stop the neighborhood energy revolution in its tracks. Even the left-leaning think tank, Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) — which is no great fan of free-markets — notes that for microgrids to become viable, “major policy barriers must be lifted in order to expand energy democracy to customers and producers.”

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