Industrial giant Siemens is the latest corporation to make moves in the blockchain space. The company has announced it intends to use the technology to bring innovation to the energy sector and give more power to the people – you know, the usual yet-to-be-proven decentralization rhetorics.
For the time being, the company is limiting its blockchain experiment to two divisions only: Energy Management and Power Generation Services. With this move, Siemens hopes to find new ways to store energy and develop a more efficient management system for energy networks.
“Siemens aims to proactively shape the future of blockchain-based, transactive energy applications, new prosumer-centric use cases as well as business models around operation of distributed energy systems, microgrids and financing,” the company said.
“Ultimately, block-chain-based [sic] applications and business models could help increase the overall efficiency of future energy networks and enable new forms of asset and project financing,” Siemens added.
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Details around this particular use case remain scarce, but Siemens says the solution will be provided by a third-party blockchain developer Energy Web Foundation. According to a white paper published by Energy Web Foundation, the company is running a custom implementation of Ethereum.
The paper claims the solution is about 30 times more efficient than Ethereum itself, but chances are this efficiency comes at the cost of true centralization. Indeed, ignoring the pompous language, Energy Web Foundation’s white paper indicates the company is running yet another permissioned blockchain.
But considering all the regulatory uncertainty around blockchain, can you blame Siemens for opting for a more corporate-friendly solution?
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