Aussie blockchain startup Power Ledger forms US partnership to roll out “hundreds” of energy trading projects

Australian blockchain success story Power Ledger has landed a partnership with American not-for-profit energy company Helpanswers to bring the company’s peer-to-peer energy trading platform to hundreds of sites across North America.

The projects will stretch across Texas, the Chicago to Washington region, California and New England, and will cover 50 Megawatt solar storage and 50 Megawatt hour energy storage.

Initially, Power Ledger and Helpanswers intend to focus on energy-intensive project areas, such as schools, low-income housing, and wastewater and cement plants. Other areas the company’s token-based energy platform will be used include electric car charging networks.

Some of these projects will be backed by Power Ledger’s ‘Asset Germination Events’, where users who hold the startup’s POWR tokens can purchase a small amount of a renewable energy asset and receive dividends based on that asset’s revenue. These assets include things like solar plants or wind farms and act as a way to feed POWR tokens back into the ecosystem and maintain liquidity.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Helpanswers to grow our technology and platform footprint in North America and bring Power Ledger a step closer to our goal of democratising power,” Power Ledger managing director David Martin said in a statement.

“Power Ledger is focussed on creating the right economic and investment platform for consumer-owned, low-cost, low-carbon energy systems to transform the electricity industry.”

Helpanswers is founded by Mark Johnson, who previously headed up the US Department of Energy’s multi-billion dollar energy efficiency and renewable energy program. He has also worked with multinational energy management company Schneider Electric in their Smart Cities division.

“We are very excited to bring the tried and tested Power Ledger Platform to North America with our technical assistance and customer care,” Johnson said in a statement.

The deal continues a string of recent announcements from Power Ledger, which cemented itself as having completed one of Australia’s most successful initial coin offerings (ICOs) after raising $34 million in October last year.

In recent months the startup has won part of a government grant and been named as the top trending startup in Western Australia. The Power Ledger team will also be flying off to Richard Branson’s Necker island later this year to compete in the Extreme Tech Challenge grand final.

“We’ve got a pipeline of projects we’re working on which will hopefully see an increase of utilisation for the POWR token. That’s the focus of the business — create projects which will increase the use of the POWR token,” co-founder Dr. Jemma Green told StartupSmart in November.

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