German software company PONTON is launching “Enerchain Local” at the European Utility Week

Enerchain Local provides a marketplace for energy communities enabling price-based load balancing and the monetisation of flexibility while increasing self-reliance and local power consumption. It also enables utilities to respond to the increased demand from customers for locally sourced renewable energy. Enerchain Local supports two different P2P trading solutions:

1. Sharing of energy between members of energy communities

This solution enables producers and consumers to bunch together in virtual power communities and share energy at an agreed fixed price. Participants can monitor their daily production and consumption profiles in their respective communities. They can join multiple communities, each having an individually set price, and even donate energy to non-profit organizations. There is always an energy supplier required, who operates the trading platform, facilitates the allocation and functions as the residual load supplier, in case the production is not sufficient to match consumption or vice versa. Whenever electricity is shared, it is to the advantage of both producers and consumers.

Together with an Austrian utility, PONTON is currently operating the software in a multiple month field test. Find more details here: www.ponton.de/enerchainlocal.

2. Direct real-time trading of electricity between neighbours

This marketplace solution enables producers and consumers, connected to each other within a microgrid for example, to trade power which is physically delivered in real-time from the seller to the buyer. The entire process is fully automated by devices and intelligent agents which enable participants to determine their preferences in terms of price and generation type. This way, hundreds of electronic agents negotiate prices and quantities for deliveries which occur 15 minutes later. Prices are variable and depend on local demand and supply. However, energy suppliers acting as residual load providers have the ability to set cap and floor prices. PONTON’s real-time trading platform may be used by operators of microgrids, by DSOs, aggregators and even energy suppliers. As only the residual load is delivered over the public grid, both the producer and consumer share significant economic benefit, leading to a win-win situation.

PONTON’s real-time trading platform has been developed together with partners within the ETIBLOGG project (www.etiblogg.com) and will be demonstrated on European Utilities Week in Paris (www.european-utility-week.com), Stand L140.

Michael Merz, managing director at PONTON says:
“A lot of research has been invested over the past years to find out the right way for local P2P trading. Now we can offer two solutions – one that can be immediately deployed within a supplier’s IT landscape and another that leads to the way how transactive grids may operate in a few years’ time”.

Simone Gitschier, project manager ETIBLOGG from GETEC ENERGIE says:
“The ETIBLOGG project benefits enormously from the experience and developments that led to the Enerchain Local software. ETIBLOGG for example uses and enhances the previously developed trading platform to enable safe and real-time electricity trading of very small amounts in a microgrid.”