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Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

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Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#31

Post by Animats »

On the site for RWE's charging points, there's no mention of this.[1]

The way RWE actually works is like cell phone plans. Users have to sign up for a 1-year contract. This gets you an ID token which the charging stations recognize when you plug into the charger. Then there's an EUR 0.30/Kwh charge, which is billed periodically. That's the usual way the system is used.

The Share and Charge system [3] doesn't use Etherium as a currency. They use Euros. Payments are made using SEPA, PayPal, and Sofortüberweisung (which is sort of like Venmo.) They mention that they're using a blockchain, but don't mention Etherium at all. Share and Charge is a third-party payment system for electric charging points. They try to sign up charging point operators to accept their payment system.

So the headline is somewhat deceptive.

[1] https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1178726/private-cust... [2] https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1232368/products-ser... [3] https://shareandcharge.com/en/

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#32

Post by davidgerard »

Animats wrote: post #31

On the site for RWE's charging points, there's no mention of this.[1] The way RWE actually works is like cell phone plans. Users have to sign up for a 1-year contract. This gets you an ID token which the charging stations recognize when you plug into the charger. Then there's an EUR 0.30/Kwh charge, which is billed periodically. That's the usual way the system is used. The Share and Charge system [3] doesn't use Ethe…

The original post is a completely BS Bitcoin/Blockchain hype blog, any journalism will be completely coincidental.

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#33

Post by davidgerard »

ralfd wrote: post #6

What is Ethereum? Something like Bitcoin?

A cryptocurrency with Smart Contracts. Works a bit like this:

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ethereum-smart-contract...

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-dao/

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#34

Post by contingencies »

Recently I restarted thinking on IFEX[0], a generic transaction protocol for arbitrary assets/settlement systems conceived in 2012 while building Kraken[1]. One of the four pilot use cases we are considering is energy routing within next-generation, renewables-focused, community-owned electricity and data infrastructure.[2] We are building an interesting team: one of the collaborators is a European inventor with significant experience in this area and some contact with major electric vehicle brands who would like a safe solution for rapid charging, another is a maths/physics guy with nontrivial quantitative finance experience ($3bn+ under management). We also have conventional and distributed manufacturing and logistics as pilot use cases. If anyone would like to collaborate feel free to get in touch.

[0] http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex/2012-04-11-pa...

[1] http://kraken.com/

[2] http://fiberhood.nl/

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#35

Post by davidgerard »

RichardHeart wrote: post #15
DennisP wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has the second-biggest market cap at $6 billion, it's been in production for a couple years, it has multiple open source implementations, its inventors and other developers are known to the public, it has much more powerful smart contract capabilities than Bitcoin, and it doesn't have high fees and backlogs.

The multiple implementations exponentially increase the breakdown of consensus. The network is literally unusable often. Their consensus is so bad, that the last breakdown of consensus created the nunber 6 crypto marketcap "currency" "etherum classic" which has "value" of $485 million as this is written. It has no high fees, for there is no demand for what it does, and if there was demand, no limit to the supply to f…

It's also worth noting the quality of the thinkers at work on it:

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/buterins-quantum-quest/

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#36

Post by sanswork »

skybrian wrote: post #30
haddr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how they justify the use of proof of work to maintain consensus. Wouldn't it consume a significant amount of the electricity generated by those solar panels?

I'm guessing there's wasted electricity that solar panels generate at inconvenient times? If the power is "free" (not being used for anything else) at least they can mine Bitcoins.

Bitcoin miners fall behind the curve fast enough that if you aren't running them full time with cheap electricity you are losing money.

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#37

Post by scott_ci »

sanswork wrote: post #26
scott_ci wrote: post #23

There's a recent podcast about this and blockchain + energy sector in general: https://epicenter.tv/episode/174/ Why blockchain? It enables peer-to-peer buying and selling of electricity (no middle man), which becomes more interesting as the grid itself is becoming more decentralized with solar, etc. Imagine being able to buy and sell electricity directly between you and your neighbors. Lots of questions about how th…

How does a blockchain make that setup easier? You need to a system in place to track who is selling to who so if you have that it's just as easy to have it do bank transfers as it is blockchain ones. Do you also imagine there would be wires running between each set of properties? If not you still need a third party to manage the centralized distribution network in which case you're not going to sell directly to your…

I imagine a marketplace with a ledger of electrons and money, with smart switches and meters that directly interact with this marketplace.

One interesting idea is having certain energy tagged as "green" energy, like wind generated, which some people might be willing to pay more for.

How do you prevent fraud (bypassing the meter) and who still pays to maintain the grid? Not sure. Is this really more efficient than a private / gov run system? I don't know. Blockchain interacting with real physical assets always seems murky to me.

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#38

Post by RichardHeart »

davidgerard wrote: post #33
ralfd wrote: post #6

What is Ethereum? Something like Bitcoin?

A cryptocurrency with Smart Contracts. Works a bit like this: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ethereum-smart-contract... https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-dao/

Love the links!

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#39

Post by [deleted] »

davidgerard wrote: post #29
iLoch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they probably didn't do any research before launching this project.

You might be surprised how little research companies do before launching blockchain initiatives. After creating the Hyperledger consortium, IBM were actually surprised when it turned out business didn't want to share all their dealings with all their competitors, but only with the specific other business each deal is with: https://lists.hyperledger.org/pipermail/hyperledger-requirem... https://lists.hyperledger.org/p…

[deleted]

Re: Germany's Energy Giant Launches Ethereum-Based Electric Car Charging Stations

#40

Post by darawk »

RichardHeart wrote: post #12
erikpukinskis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum is an autonomous AI middleman, but yes it is a middleman. One whose plans and actions you can determine determinalistically. > Cash is King The value of cash is subject to the whims of the issuer. The value of a cryptocurrency is subject to the whims of a global market. They can also be trivially "forked" by creating colored coins which allow you to create a slightly different autonomous AI currency, if the…

1. They only accept euros. So you get to multiply the euro risk times the ethereum risk times their oracle keeping your balance on ethereum risk. 2. Ethereum has already human intervention rolled back millions of dollars of transactions in "the dao" and they chosen winning and losing implementations whenever there's a network split due to their dual codebases trying to be bug for bug perfect in consensus. 3. You can'…

> 3. You can't increase security or reduce risk, by layer abstractions on top of other things, in this case, the euro.

That is pretty demonstrably false. A lock is a layer of abstraction on top of metal. That can increase security and reduce risk.

More directly to your point, a set of investments that are, on their own, extremely risky can be set off against one another (i.e. hedged) in such a way as to make the whole far less risky. The idea that you cannot create a low-risk high security product on top of high-risk low-security substrates is simply false.

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