Image: From left to right: James Wong, Head of Marketing, Narada; Martin Lim, COO, Electrify; and Jonathan Tai, Business Development Manager, Narada; May 31, 2018
The Asia Pacific (APAC) subsidiary of Chinese energy firm Narada Power Source is teaming up with Singapore startup Electrify[1] to deploy blockchain and Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions for energy trading and tracking across APAC.
Electrify has built a marketplace for electricity retail that uses blockchain technology to provide increased transparency and efficiency. The marketplace aims to make it faster and easier for both businesses and residential consumers to compare, select and transact electricity contracts.
An Electrify SG engineer shows a PowerPod in Singapore. REUTERS/Edgar Su
The PowerPod is Electrify’s proprietary IoT device that tracks and audits energy production from small-scale producers before logging the data onto a blockchain, a key factor in peer-to-peer energy trading. The same data, along with other relevant environment information, will be able to provide valuable insights to parties both within and beyond the ecosystem. The company released[2] the minimum viable product for the PowerPod earlier this month.
The partnership with Narada will see the Chinese firm deploy Electrify’s blockchain technology and PowerPod hardware through out APAC starting with Singapore, Australia, Japan, and Cambodia by the end of the year. The technology will enable traceability, real-time trading, and optimization of distributed energy storage assets across its operations in the region.
The PowerPod devices will be deployed within Narada’s energy store platforms and will capture and present data on a dashboard in real-time, enabling the firm to accurately track the movement and price of energy against the spot price of electricity in the market.
As part of the agreement also, Narada and Electrify will jointly explore potential business and investment opportunities in solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
