Grid Singularity

Grid Singularity, founded in 2016, operates as a technology company engineering a decentralized, open-source energy data exchange platform. The firm was established by a team of energy market professionals and blockchain pioneers, including Ewald Hesse, Ana Trbovich, Erwin Smole, and Dr. Gavin Wood, who was also a co-founder of Ethereum. The idea originated in 2014, with the founders brainstorming with individuals who would later co-found Ethereum and Polkadot. Ewald Hesse, the CEO, has an extensive background in the energy and automation industries with companies like Andritz Hydro and ABB. Co-founder and COO Ana Trbovich brings a wealth of experience in policy advising for organizations like the EU and the World Bank, along with a background in academia, holding a PhD from the Fletcher School.

The company's core offering is the Grid Singularity Exchange, a software platform that allows for the simulation and operation of peer-to-peer (P2P) and community-based energy marketplaces. This bottom-up market design connects individual energy assets, such as home solar panels or batteries, enabling them to trade energy directly with one another. The platform serves a range of clients, including individual prosumers (those who both produce and consume energy), energy communities, aggregators who manage distributed energy assets, and grid operators. By creating digital representations, or "digital twins," of homes and community assets, users can simulate market scenarios to understand potential savings and other benefits before live deployment. Grid operators can utilize the platform's API to implement dynamic grid fees, helping to manage grid congestion and improve stability by leveraging local market flexibility. Initial simulations have shown the potential for significant reductions in energy bills for participants and decreased peak load on the grid.

A significant milestone for Grid Singularity was the co-founding of the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) in January 2017, in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute. The EWF was established to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology in the energy sector, leading to the launch of the Energy Web Chain. Grid Singularity's business model for its open-source software involves providing additional features and tools to grid operators for an annual subscription fee. For deployed markets, a transaction fee-sharing model is anticipated. The company has received funding, including a grant from the European Union in 2021.

Keywords: energy exchange, peer-to-peer trading, blockchain technology, energy communities, grid management, open source, prosumer, distributed energy resources, energy data, market simulation