Proof-Of-Energy (PoE)

Disclaimer: I am just dumping my thoughts on EV charging stations infrastructure on the blockchain. I have not validated them. Let me know if you have any idea or questions on it :)

What?

• As an environment-friendly substitute for conventional fuel-powered vehicles, EVs(Electric vehicles) and their components have been widely developed and deployed worldwide.
• But the worry that your vehicle will run out of power on a long drive before you can find a charging station will always be there.
• Without the proper charging station infrastructure, potential buyers may remain hesitant to purchase an EV.
• These vehicles are costly too.
• Not only that, there is no control over the price of public charging stations services. It may vary from $3 to $11, which is again coming costly for EV owner as they do not have any other option in case they ran out of charge.

Why?

• Because of high pollution produced by these conventional vehicle which runs on gasoline or diesel powered engines (which is now becoming very costly), there is certainly need of Electric vehicles.
• Since these vehicles are very costly, we need to find a way to motivate (apart from social responsibility) people to invest in EV.
• How about making EV investment as one time investment with “$0 running cost”?
• At the same time keeping in mind that charging service providers should also get paid for their service.

How?

• We propose our solution to this problem, “Proof-Of-Energy”.
• Proof-Of-Energy is a consensus for our “Blockchain based EV charging infrastructure” where, charging service providers will submit a proof of energy spent on charging an EV to the network.
• That proof is validated (by grid and other nodes) and once consensus is reached, the service provide will get rewards in the form on tokens whose value may be decided by government or via exchange.
• Unlike Proof-Of-Work, in Proof-Of-Energy, the energy is not wasted in solving some unnecessary problem in order to compete with other nodes, rather the energy is utilised by electric vehicles.

In short SP will submit the Proof-of-Energy to the network in order to get rewards.

Extending the idea further

• We can further extend our idea.
• Group of service providers can club together and may setup a solar farm to produce energy to charge EVs.
• After charging the vehicle, SP can submit the proof to the network which gets validated by other nodes in a decentralised manner and SP will get reward.
• Nodes who are not willing to become SP can also join the network and setup solar farms and use the produced energy at home and submit the proof of produced energy to the network and earn reward.
• Even if non SPs are not contributing to EVs, but to themselves, they should get rewards since by doing so they are actually saving the electricity from grid.
• EV owner can also become a SP when his charging point is not in use and can earn reward.
• The analogy of PoE is, in PoW people waste so much of energy by competing each other just to add transaction into a ledger, PoE allows you to use that energy for much better cause.

Some Discussions

discussions about POE in social media

This idea is different than what people are doing in the energy sector. At one hand they are talking about saving energy by making solar farms and on the other hand they are using PoW (which consume a lot of energy) for adding a transaction into the ledger.