Finance, Sourcing Renewables  -  December 20, 2018

Blockchain-based payments for RE come to Penn.

American PowerNet, an independent power supply company, announced its adoption of a blockchain-based digital payments platform to facilitate real-time payments within the renewable energy sector and to purchase power for Pennsylvania.

A statement said, “The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, through its electric supplier relationship with American PowerNet, is the first entity in the country to purchase its power using Signets, which are digital representations of U.S. dollars that settle in real-time on the Bank’s Signet Platform.” American PowerNet, an independent energy management company developing and providing wholesale electric procurement services to large retail clients, is offering the first end-to-end blockchain-enabled platform for purchasing renewable energy, Verde Blocks. Signet’s role in Verde Blocks is to facilitate payments for the delivery of energy.

“Signet affords American PowerNet, via their Verde Blocks platform, the ability to settle with power generators on a daily basis once schedules are confirmed, compared with the traditional 30-day payment structure that has long been the industry standard,” according to the statement.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority have begun to incorporate Signet into their regular transactions of buying and selling power via American PowerNet’s Verde Blocks platform, a blockchain technology that provides large retail electric buyers direct access to sustainable power generators utilizing smart contracts protocols to automate many of the functions. The Verde Blocks platform helps large retail electric buyers and sustainable generators find one another. By incorporating one of the key advantages of blockchain technology, a smart contract structure will create a single ledger and will automatically hold and disperse payments. Signet is the payment structure for Verde Blocks.

“The ability to transact in real-time with a bank-backed digital USD currency instills a new level of confidence for companies to participate,” said Scott Helm, CEO of American PowerNet. “Generators find it attractive because their standard bilateral contracts have never before provided an avenue in which to be paid daily, based on confirmed delivery.”

“The electric industry and the finance industry are changing quickly, right before our eyes, noted Helm.“Using Signet’s USD blockchain-based payments platform will enable significant transformation throughout the renewable energy space as it fully automates a process within a multi-billion industry that hasn’t witnessed change in decades,” he concluded.