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Rotterdam’s microgrid trial drives user costs down 11%, producer returns rises 14%

A high-frequency microgrid trading platform in the Port of Rotterdam has cut consumer costs by 11% and increased producer returns by 14%, project partners said Oct. 5.

The Distro platform, developed by S&P Global Platts and the port’s BlockLab Rotterdam innovation hub, is trialing high-frequency artificial intelligence trading of solar and battery storage assets in Rotterdam’s innovation dock, connecting 32 commercial energy consumers.

“The platform has hosted 20 million blockchain-validated, cleared and settled transactions,” James Rilett, S&P Global Platts’ head of innovation, said.

This was the first time high-frequency power trading had been successfully integrated with blockchain settlement, Rilett said.

“Blockchain is very powerful for trustful clearing of data but it can slow you down. We’re aiming for a system that can benchmark against market leaders in high-frequency trade, with potentially millions of trades per second balancing the marketplace,” he said.

On-site use of solar generation rose to 92% during the trials, while returns on battery storage increased by 20%, the partners said.

Trials had removed distribution and grid costs as well as bid-offer spreads, while providing sensibly-priced local storage, Rilett said.

Once fully scaled across the Port of Rotterdam’s activities, the platform could support businesses in delivering carbon reductions of up to 30 million tonnes, the project partners said.

“Balancing local electricity needs with local generation holds the key to unlocking significant grid infrastructure savings,” Nico van Dooren, Port of Rotterdam’s director of new business development & portfolio, said.

The next stage could see Distro used to integrate a 50 MW repowered wind farm in the port to a new distribution area, van Dooren said.

“The local grid is not big enough to connect the wind farm to the national grid,” he said. “We’ll look to see if it is possible to use Distro to connect the wind farm to adjacent distribution activities, optimizing the use of local wind power and avoiding having to expand the grid connection.”

The platform provides each market participant with an AI-enabled energy trading agent software tool that learns the user’s energy needs, preferences and behaviors.

It analyses billions of data points in real-time, automatically buying and selling energy at the best price for the user.

Prices on the platform respond to changes in local supply and demand fundamentals, providing signals for either using or storing energy.

It then uses blockchain smart contracts to validate transactions and manage identities, ensuring reliability and anonymity. All transactions are immutable and cryptographically verifiable.

ABN AMRO’s Banking as a Service sandbox was used to set up virtual accounts for users.
Source: Platts

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