New Proof Of Concept For Using IOTA To Smartly Power Electric Vehicles Revealed By Dutch Firm ElaadNl

By Prashant Jha

ElaadNL, a Dutch tech firm, has recently developed a proof of concept for something rather interesting: a smart power grid meant to fuel electric vehicles using the immensely potent IOTA Tangle technology. This tech element is mainly focused on IoT or Internet of Things and this is the basis of the newly developed proof of concept.

You May Also Read: A Beginner’s Guide to IOTA

On 14th February, an announcement from the company informed the world about this fresh development. The idea is to allow smart grids to do more than simply consume power. With this development, they will be able to both generate and autonomously redistribute power among members of the community. The charging stations, if they charge vehicles at a time other than the peak hours or at a lower speed, can even benefit from earning IOTA tokens.

The official announcement on their website describes it in the following terms:

“ElaadNL, the smart charging infrastructure lab founded by Dutch grid operators, has devised a Proof of Concept (PoC) that demonstrates how smart grids can autonomously balance energy consumption using IOTA technology. The PoC created at the ElaadNL test lab in Arnhem together with grid operator Enexis, shares data securely via the IOTA Tangle and lets the charging devices themselves decide if they want to help balance grid load or not. By charging electric vehicles at a slower speed or at an off-peak time, the charging stations earn a small fee in IOTA tokens. The system runs itself – no human interaction is needed.”

This company has an experience of having set up around three thousand public charging grids within its home country. Speaking of the new proof of concept, Harm van den Brink, who serves as the expert of distributed ledger technology (DLT) at ElaadNL stated that:

 “This proof of concept shows a possible future electricity system, where energy is shared amongst neighbours and decentralised islands are capable of balancing itself. We are using our electricity grid in total different way than we did 50 years ago, we went from only consuming to also producing energy. We are demanding more energy at peak times, and when the sun is shining we will have a surplus of energy. This all should be dealt with in real time. Our solution is a first step in to that direction. We showed with our proof of concept that this can be done, although future development is required to actually put this in the grid.”