The Virtual Power Exchange (VPE), a BOSS Controls and Securrency Joint Venture to Bring on-demand Secure, Renewable Energy on Hedera

We’re excited to announce that Virtual Power Exchange (VPE), the first digital energy exchange platform for real-time matching and settlement of generation and consumption transactions between retail users, has selected Hedera as their DLT of choice.

Currently, market participants are required to have at least one MWh (megawatt hour) of energy to participate in wholesale energy markets. This means that the market today is largely dominated by public utilities and large power generators. Through the VPE platform, a new sub-MWh “Distribution Energy Market” will be created - in turn digitizing, decentralizing, democratizing, and decarbonizing the power grid and grid management. 

As a result of enabling sub-MWh participation, both small and large players alike will be enabled to equitably participate, both publicly and privately, in turn greatly expanding participation in a new retail-level distribution market. 

New smaller players participating in the VPE platform might include electric vehicle (EV) owners, house owners with solar panels, and so on. By enabling these players to participate, it will also facilitate investment from private entities into Distributed Energy Resources (DER) like solar, wind, and battery by lowering the threshold for market entry.

At the same time, the overall solution moves the highly inefficient 100+-year-old grid design, from an open loop system to a closed loop, intelligent, networked system, providing upwards of a 30% reduction in energy costs, consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The VPE accomplishes this through automated buyer/seller matchmaking; automatic optimization for price, location, and supply/demand; faster onboarding and automated management for Distributed Energy Resources (DERs); and a low-cost, highly scalable infrastructure.

It also accelerates payback for private and public renewable energy and energy storage investments, creating an economically viable peer-to-peer energy trading platform and, through aggregation, will make access to wholesale energy markets economically viable.

In sum, the VPE is set to fundamentally change energy management by reducing costs and GHG emissions, whilst increasing efficiency, customer value, and utility/provider management capabilities.

The VPE will leverage the Hedera Token Service (HTS) and Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) to provide a trust layer for the onramp and selling of carbon credit/renewable energy credit services, a marketplace for the sale of carbon credits, and developer tools such as SDK, API, and additional services for the tracking of carbon emission. 

This will enable brands to reduce their emissions balance through offset purchasing the highest quality and fully traceable offsets created by the Hedera Guardian. Over the next 5 years, the VPE is also expected to make further use of Hedera’s upgraded Solidity smart contract service.

The VPE is a joint venture between BOSS Controls and Securrency, with BOSS leading operations and delivery. BOSS and Securrency decided to leverage Hedera for several of its core capabilities and differentiators. At the most fundamental level, the decentralized architecture of DLT enables further security and resilience, with the leaderless Hedera network having no single point of failure. 

A key differentiator for the VPE is its emphasis on security. This includes zero-trust; built-for-purpose components; transaction whitelisting; manufacturing within US borders; comprehensive IT and OT security, including chain of custody; and many others. Complementing this, the Hedera network is asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant (aBFT) - the gold standard of security for a consensus algorithm.

Alongside security, the throughput capabilities of the Hedera network mean that exponentially more assets can be onboarded and transactions processed, compared to other centralized/cloud-based solutions that BOSS has tested. Additionally, the network facilitates the VPE with core solution components like the open-source Guardian, ensuring end-to-end transaction continuity, visibility, resiliency, and security of sustainability assets.

As the market is moving to Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), BOSS adopting a DLT like Hedera is enabling this acceleration for both utility and private DERs at the edge by standardizing customer onboard and monetizing smaller, localized, DER assets. 

The VPE is expected to launch in Q4 2023.

About The HBAR Foundation

The HBAR Foundation supports the creation of Web3 communities built on the Hedera network, by empowering and funding the builders developing these communities. The Foundation’s six funds - focused on the Crypto Economy, Metaverse, Sustainability, Fintech, Privacy, and Female Founders - each support communities within those areas, and the interconnectedness enables applications to participate as part of a larger ecosystem. The collective power of these funds enables entrepreneurs, developers, and enterprises of all sizes to tackle some of the world’s largest problems, and create and control their own economies, all built on the Hedera public network. Whether you’re building something new or migrating an existing EVM-based application and community, the HBAR Foundation is here to support you. For additional information, please visit https://hbarfoundation.org/.

About BOSS 

Boss Controls is a cloud-based, IoT energy management company focused on cyber secure and energy-resilient solutions and services for small to medium size buildings, grid edge intelligence, and control down to the device load. We provide commercial real estate owners a turn-key, fully integrated solution of software, hardware, and services, providing energy efficiency savings, enabling them to participate in current Demand Response (DR) wholesale markets, and manage additional Distributed Energy Resources (DER). We also provide insight to utilities to better manage the grid and increase resilience while helping them lower their peak demand costs via access to virtual power from DR down to the device level.

About Securrency

Securrency is a market-leading innovator in the development of institutional-grade, compliance-aware tokenization, account management, and decentralized finance technology based on blockchain. Their Capital Markets Platform, with its patented Compliance Aware Token® Framework, coupled with its powerful Digital Asset Composer, which automates complex financial operations, is transforming financial services. Securrency is laying the foundation for a truly global, interoperable digital assets marketplace.