Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is growing at an extraordinary rate and with that growth brings a variety of opportunities for energy storage, transfer, and market activities. Today’s EV batteries are capable of storing between 30 to 200 kWh. For the EV, this energy is needed to provide more mileage in between charges; for grid and microgrid applications, these mobile power banks provide a variety of additional opportunities. The average American home consumes 30 kWh of electricity per day and is often subjected to fluctuations in utility prices throughout the day, lapses in power during times of grid duress, and, for those with solar power, a higher energy cost when the sun doesn’t shine.
Blockchain provides an opportunity to represent EVs as digital assets, which means they can be summoned to provide stability for grids and communities across the globe when necessary. MOBI is working to create standards, schemas, and technical solutions that will strengthen the mobilization of battery resources.
One example is on-demand supplemental power for homes. Homeowners across the world are installing solar panels and battery storage systems for their homes to reduce their carbon footprint, secure access to power, and reduce utility bills. Imagine if you could eliminate the upfront cost of battery installation and simply summon an unused EV to provide backup power to your home.
In another scenario, imagine a hot day during the summer. The grid is unable to provide the amount of power needed. With blockchain technology, individuals can now interact with mobile battery storage systems to summon extra power for their home or business — all in a decentralized way. A number of other use cases present themselves. From priority access to charging stations, expanded charging networks across the country, improved energy market accessibility, multi-fuel charging options, and monetization of battery power, there’s no shortage of ways blockchain can galvanize the EV market.
MOBI is working on a variety of projects to unleash the power of EV grid integration and make the above vision a reality. The Electric Vehicle Grid Integration (EVGI) II Working Group brings together some of the best and brightest across the mobility, blockchain, grid, and battery industries to create standards and schemas for enabling bidirectional EV charging and related applications. The EVGI II Working Group meets every week to discuss various ways the grid can be supported by EVs and how EVs can be digitized to further support grid initiatives. Join MOBI to participate in EVGI business & technical requirements discussions and create industry standards!
Digitizing an EV requires something we call a Self-Sovereign Digital Twin™ (SSDT). A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. An SSDT is a digital twin which is anchored in a decentralized trust network using W3C’s Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) Standard (for MOBI’s community, this is the Integrated Trust Network, or ITN). By using the SSDT and W3C’s Verifiable Credential (VC) Standard, the controller of the SSDT can participate as an autonomous economic agent in trusted transactions through issuing VCs and Verifiable Presentations (VPs).
MOBI is also working to develop Citopia, a decentralized marketplace that will, among other things, assist individuals in digitizing and monetizing their assets. Citopia provides a clear pathway for users to interact with mobile batteries, grid and microgrid power, and rooftop solar production using SSDTs (with DIDs registered on the ITN, identity trust anchor), eliminating the need for paperwork and multiple payment gateways. If an individual has their asset operating on Citopia, they can monetize their vehicle’s battery to provide power to the grid, get rewarded for charging at off-peak demand time periods, earn carbon credit rewards, and receive incentives to provide power to a variety of microgrids or individuals seeking public power.
MOBI is also creating a way to track the manufacturing, health, and recycling process of EVs and EV batteries. Battery State of Health (SOH) has become of particular interest for governments across the world, as the ability to battery health and performance can help spur circular business models and enable second and third-life uses such as decentralized energy storage systems. MOBI recently released the Battery SOH White Paper to assess the state of the art on Battery SOH. The SOH White Paper is a foundational component of the MOBI Battery Initiative, which aims to improve the sustainability and visibility of the global battery value chain through the creation of an industry-wide, CARB-compliant secure data management system.
Despite EV sales skyrocketing in recent years, we still lack sustainable EV infrastructure, secondary markets, and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) applications. However, EVs have been shown to provide valuable utility cases to communities across the globe, and the rapid convergence of smart technologies in recent years has brought us significantly closer to unlocking these opportunities on a global scale. Together, we can leverage blockchain technology to create an EV market that is accessible, decentralized, and rewarding for participants.