Late last month, the non-profit MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge hosted an event focused on new developments in clean energy distribution and how blockchain technology could play a role in how electrical grids of the future are built.

1. teamsteverhyner.com http://www.teamsteverhyner.com/how-bitcoin-brought-electricity-to-a-south-african-school/
Steven L.
Rhyner
How Bitcoin Brought Electricity to a South African School
Late last month, the non-profit MIT Enterprise Forum of
Cambridge hosted an event focused on new developments in
clean energy distribution and how blockchain technology could
play a role in how electrical grids of the future are built.
The event was sponsored by the Massachusetts Clean Energy
Center, a government-funded agency that promotes clean
energy expansion in the state, and included presentations from
companies like IBM and startups like Consensys, Lo3 Energy
andGrid Singularity.
Arguably the most notable demonstration of the night came in
the
form of
Usizo,
a
crowdfunding platform designed to facilitate energy payments between donors and select schools in South Africa.
The project was first announced last fall.
Grid Singularity CEO Ewald Hesse led the demo from Boston, with Lorien Gamaroff, CEO of Johannesburg-based
blockchain startup Bankymoon, calling in via Skype from nearly 8,000 miles away, at the Emaweni Primary School
in Soweto, South Africa.
As Gamaroff remarked, the nature of how power in South Africa has changed over the years. Rather than paying for
electricity after it is received at a home or business, end users are instead paying for this electricity upfront.
For example, if a homeowner wanted to power their home for a day, they would go to an approved vendor who, in
exchange for payment, would provide a special token that can be deposited in a smart meter. After the exchange,
the lights turn on.
Gamaroff argued that this system can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for those living in rural communities.
The system also relies on the existence of third parties who act as middlemen between end users and the power
companies.
“A prepaid payment system makes the energy a lot more expensive because those vendors need infrastructure,
there’s traveling cost, and it’s also very expensive to make those payments,” Gamaroff explained. “If you’re in a
remote area and your lights go out, there’s no way to make a payment, no easy or electronic way to do it.”
This situation, he continued, could be circumvented through the use of digital currency, explaining at the time:
“You can now have a smart meter, a bitcoin blockchain-enabled meter, and foreign donors can send
money directly to the meter without having to send it to an organization that will take or re-distribute
the funds.”
1/3

2. Smart payments
The concept of using digital
currency to prepay for electricity
isn’t a new one – Gamaroff himself
was involved in a previous effort back in 2014 aimed at facilitating prepaid electricity to South African residents using
bitcoin.
Yet the new effort takes a more philanthropic approach, emphasizing bitcoin’s use case for international aid through
its crowdfunding platform structure.
As demonstrated by Gamaroff and Hesse, the project involves two components – the smart meter programmed to
accept digital currency and positioned at the building set to receive power, and the crowdfunding platform through
which donors can contribute bitcoin.
Gamaroff shared photos on Twitter prior to the MIT event, showcasing the installation of the smart meter:
Donors who contribute using the platform can see how much electricity a school consumes over a given period and
can calculate how much power will be contributed based on how much BTC is given.
Real-time demo
For the MIT demo, Hesse transmitted 1 BTC to the smart meter in Soweto, an amount that would provide roughly
three weeks of electricity to the Emaweni Primary School.
Meanwhile, in Soweto, a large gathering of school administrators, teachers and staff waited in the darkness – it was
the middle of the night local time – for the payment to arrive.
“Now what’s happening is that it’s now going through the blockchain, the meter is going to take the payment, it will
calculate the tariff and load the required amount of electricity onto the meter,” Gamaroff explained during the demo.
Despite an initial delay, the system worked – the lights in the classroom turned on, sparking a wave of applause and
cheers from both the crowd in Boston and the school staff gathered in Soweto.
Within moments, celebration and music broke out at the Emaweni Primary School as the demo concluded.
Future of project
What comes next for the Usizo
project?
According to Hesse, whose startup
is developing a platform for connecting power companies through the use of blockchain technology, the project won’t
be consigned to merely serving as a test.
He told CoinDesk that the future of Usizo will likely involve its management under some kind of non-governmental
organization (NGO structure). Hesse said that the project has already generated positive interest from those parties,
though when the transition would take place isn’t certain.
Yet for those educators in Soweto, the platform offers the potential to help keep the lights on – and to help those
students to keep on learning.
African university via Shutterstock
2/3

3. Re-posted from www.coindesk.com March 9, 2016 by Stan Higgins
If you’d like to become involved in this new digital currency and operate a home based network marketing
business too, click here.
Share this post and help spread the love!
Thank you for reading my posts! If you would like to connect, reach out to me on
Facebook.
3/3