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Guardtime and Intrinsic ID, the world’s leading provider of digital authentication technology for Internet of Things security and embedded applications, announced the companies will jointly develop an energy trading platform to host a decentralized market for energy transactions. The platform will offer a virtual real-time marketplace integrating distributed energy resources from solar, wind and battery sources in which suppliers can sell energy to the grid by bidding into the market. It will leverage Intrinsic ID’s BROADKEY™, a secure key management software solution for IoT security, and Guardtime KSI Blockchain platform to bring leading security technology for a distributed seamless and automated trading platform.
The project is funded under a contract awarded by the Dutch government and the city of Rotterdam, and managed by BlockLab, a subsidiary of the Port of Rotterdam. BlockLab develops use cases with alliances including engineers, developers and end users, with a focus on energy and logistics.
“In the energy market a lot of capacity is not being utilized optimally. This award shows the vision of the Dutch government to transform energy markets from closed and centralized to open and distributed,”
said Guardtime Chief Executive Officer Mike Gault.
Phase I of the project is a cloud-based demonstration with connected smart meters, combining the core strengths of the two companies. Intrinsic ID’s BROADKEY is a proven software solution for authentication of IoT devices, such as smart meters. Authenticating smart meters securely at a hardware level by means of software, identifying every member in the network, makes it impossible for unauthorized devices to join and brings the necessary level of security. Guardtime’s KSI Blockchain is used to ensure integrity and time of every event in the network – making them verifiable independently, regardless of vendors, distribution networks or service providers.
Phase II of the project will be a pilot solution in an operating environment to test the management of energy consumption at peak hours by a complex group of energy providers and brokers. The data is stored in a distributed ledger, providing a near-real-time shared view for all participants. Joining the ledger with unclonable identities provides access to authenticated, immutable data from smart meters – for both larger energy providers as well as homeowners with excess energy from solar panels. This enables new business models – such as switching between energy providers instantly, or preferring energy from a particular community – all based on interoperability provided by the KSI blockchain.
Guardtime and Intrinsic ID will conduct the pilot project in the Rotterdam area. The metropolitan region of Rotterdam and The Hague have a combined population of 2.2 million, with 1 million homes and 128 thousand companies – including the Port of Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe.
“This is a challenging target for piloting the energy platform, with high expectations for reliability and scalability – and of course security,”
said Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic ID.
Intrinsic ID technology has wide applications for securing utility networks. The company recently joined the Wi-SUN Alliance, a global industry alliance promoting interoperable wireless-standards-based solutions for the IoT, and earlier this month exhibited at European Utility Week, where it demonstrated the use of BROADKEY to generate an unclonable device-unique identity for a smart meter, securing it with hardware-based authentication.
