RedGrid: Delivering IOEN technology today
There is no doubt that the world will embrace clean energy technology. By 2030 we need to be at zero emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Our challenge is to arrive at this point as seamlessly as possible. RedGrid and IOEN are building the operating system for the global electricity grid, and are placed to help bring the architecture needed to enable clean energy innovation across the energy ecosystem at scale.
Energy in 2021
Few things have changed the course of human development like the introduction of electricity. Since the industrial revolution electrfication has driven social and economic development. We didn’t realise, however, that burning fossil fuels to produce electricity would also be a major contributor to climate change. So the way we are producing electricity has to change.
Clean, modern energy access for all remains a clear international goal for reducing poverty and improving living conditions everywhere on earth, and is enshrined in Goal 7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Globally, during the pandemic of 2020, renewable energy was the only source of energy to grow — by over 45% in that year alone. This rate is set to increase in 2021, as the price of clean electricity generation continues to drop and more people seek environmentally conscious energy sources. This is good news for reducing greenhouse gases that lead to climate change. However, although the total amount of new clean energy went up, the distribution of who has access to clean energy actually became worse through the pandemic. There lies the problem: clean energy is cheap, but the financial and operational architecture of where and when it is produced and used isn’t sophisticated enough to provide it to all people fast enough.
Today, in one of the world’s most advanced clean energy economies, Australia, clean energy is being switched off because the grid was never designed to take energy in from all these new renewable generation sources. It’s not generation that’s the problem, it’s integration. Although many people want clean energy from sources like solar and wind, the architecture of how we use energy has to change.
Currently, there is very little understanding of how people consume and use energy in real-time, and how we as communities can harness the full power of the renewables at our disposal. We need a better grid, an understanding of how to use renewable energy at the right times, to avoid the problems that mean we’ll have to switch it off.
Smart devices and appliances can help to create the smart grid, but if those smart devices don’t understand each other they can’t coordinate and solve this problem. Luckily, there are innovations, such as RedGrid, that have come to the rescue.
RedGrid
RedGrid makes it possible for any device or appliance, even the unintelligent ones like old plug-in heaters, to become smart devices with a brain and a voice in their local ecosystem. The technology behind this intelligence is a combination of distributed software and IoT hardware, that unlock intelligent capabilities with household appliances. Harnessing this intelligence, devices can then communicate with one another throughout a local community, working together to balance the grid and maximise renewable energy usage, without interrupting the comfort of people in their homes.
Household users get an easy to understand picture of how clean their energy is, and what their devices are doing to reduce their costs and emissions. This device intelligence shifts the user experience to make clean energy more seamless, and the transition to low carbon less painful. RedGrid is now developing an IOEN-based rewards mechanism to further incentivise user participation within intelligent clean energy minigrids.
Most importantly, RedGrid’s technology is agent-centric: the intelligence and data is held at the edge providing security and stability in the system. Distributing the grid intelligence helps optimize energy production and consumption. This reduces any stress on the grid and optimizes the benefits a customer receives. It also helps to ensure the whole network is stronger.
Driving IOEN forward
Although IOEN is releasing this year, it has a rich history dating back to 2018, through leading clean energy technology company, RedGrid. IOEN is the mechanism to support clean energy minigrid deployment worldwide. IOEN uses RedGrid’s advanced agent-centric settlements and transactions technology to ensure that users can easily join virtual minigrids, automatically use energy in an effective way, and be rewarded for doing so. Because RedGrid makes devices intelligent and able to coordinate with one another and form virtual minigrids, the integration with IOEN enhances these properties, and opens up new financial mechanisms to support minigrid growth and access to energy. This creates a positive feedback loop in which users save more energy, help balance the grid and then get rewarded for doing so, increasing their savings. As more people save, and more energy becomes available, the minigrid grows, organically, through the software. This is what RedGrid have called the Software Defined Grid®. This concept is the driving force underneath IOEN, as highlighted in RedGrid’s 2019 talk at the internatioanlly-renowned Pause Fest conference.
RedGrid and IOEN CEO Adam Bumpus delivering the Ecology of Energy talk in 2019
Key developments of RedGrid
RedGrid has already taken leaps in the sector. The company has had investment from one of Australia’s largest property developers, and its technology is running on one of the world’s most advanced mini-grids, the UN award-winning mini-grid at Monash University’s net-zero initiative. Currently, RedGrid’s platform is being implemented in Australian property developments to help people save money at home.
In 2019 RedGrid held a successful crowd equity capital raise in Australia, and was the first energy company in Australia to reach its maximum crowd-sourcing target. This accelerated the business to work with leading corporate clients across different industries, including retail energy, banking, property development, and commercial minigrids. RedGrid is currently scaling up its development and working with accredited investors to deploy the commercial elements of their system (see https://redgrid.io/investment/).
What does the future hold?
RedGrid is a commercial organisation that has worked with leading clients globally to deliver intelligent energy solutions. As it worked to solve the problems that the world is currently facing in relation to the integration of clean energy, it developed the foundational technology that makes up the IOEN protocol. It is now ready to begin releasing that technology to the world, and make the Internet of Energy protocol freely available through the not-for-profit Internet of Energy Network organisation. RedGrid will continue to accelerate the development and deployment of IOEN-based technologies globally through its commercial projects, supporting the deployment and delivery of IOEN.
We have nine years to drive our economies to net zero emissions, and support every person on the planet to have access to clean, affordable, modern energy. IOEN, powered by RedGrid technology, and working with local partners around the world to deploy it is ready to do this.
It is an exciting time to be working on one of the world’s most important issues, and RedGrid is in a place to help everyone to be a part of the solution.
For more on RedGrid, go to: https://redgrid.io
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