Imagine your smart home from the future - your lighting and climate control systems are optimised throughout the day as you move around the house. The solar panels stacked on your roof can power your home all day while your electric car in the driveway can keep the lights on when the sun goes down. Your smart home devices (like Alexa and Siri) sell electricity from your roof to the neighbor’s when you are away. And at the end of the month, Google publishes your electricity bill but credits your account. After all, you are a prosumer of electricity.

The technology for realising your dream house already exists and some tech giants are already exploring ways to facilitate this to consumers and capture this market.

The past

Over the last century electricity generation and distribution assets have been developed and managed primarily by government actors across the globe. Like most infrastructure services such as water and gasoline, electricity runs on a centralised model where the assets are controlled by a few government actors. The success of the model can be measured by the fact that around 7 billion global citizens have access to electricity today.

The present

The rapid growth in renewable energy sector has transformed electricity into a decentralised commodity enabling consumers to produce their own electricity and also sell the excess to their electricity providers. This incredible development has led to consumers saving on their electricity bills while contributing towards a clean and sustainable future. In fact, the largest tech firms today including Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla are achieving grid defection by acquiring renewable energy assets to meet their electricity demand.

That leaves traditional electricity providers in a difficult spot because their revenues are shrinking as consumers opt for cheaper renewables and unless they maintain competitive consumer tariffs, electricity providers will continue losing their existing consumer base to decentralisation. Meanwhile, companies like Google and Tesla have bagged electricity licenses in USA, UK and Germany already allowing them to sell electricity to consumers just like your electricity provider does today.

The future – electricity is the new internet

Decentralised renewable energy and batteries will enable consumers to transact electricity on a blockchain platform. Electric vehicles will enable consumers to stabilise the power grid via vehicle to grid technology. And EIT InnoEnergy graduates’ companies like FlexiDao, leveraging blockchain applications, in order to accelerate the transition towards a decarbonised and decentralised energy industry.

This situation places the largest software and hardware enterprises in the best position to capture this market as they are perfectly equipped to deploy their technology prowess in an untapped trillion dollar market growing globally.

How can you join the revolution?

The global energy industry is set for a massive overhaul this decade. The clean energy revolution is transitioning the fossil fuel industry into obsolescence already and democratising electricity. The revolution will be driven by young professionals who understand technology and new-age energy systems who can accelerate the transition!

There is a huge deficiency of formal education in the energy and tech space today and I found EIT InnoEnergy leading this movement. Ranked as one of the top investors in the renewable energy solutions, the biggest energy accelerator in Europe offers Master’s programmes that are perfectly suited for the needs of the industry: young professionals and tech companies looking to expand their sustainability expertise.

by Arjun Gupta, EIT InnoEnergy Master School alumni and Top 30 under 30 Sustainability Leader 2019

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