According to CCNto reportAccording to CCN

to report

, retail giant Wal-Mart recently won a patent for a grid efficiency management system based on blockchain technology.

Walmart first applied for the patent in December last year. Yesterday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that the patent has been approved. The purpose of this Wal-Mart system is that it can be deployed in large organizations such as residences, businesses, and schools. The entire network forms a distributed ledger of energy consumption. Each device can obtain Bitcoin or other encrypted currency rewards by contributing the remaining power. These rewards can in turn be used to buy needed energy from energy companies.

To understand the power of this simple design, we can first understand the pain points of the energy industry. Taking electric energy as an example, the investment in electric power infrastructure is large, and the expansion and supply flexibility are poor. If the estimation is inaccurate when building infrastructure, or people’s demand for electric power changes due to changes in social factors, there will be excess power or accidents in energy companies. Insufficient situation. If there is a surplus, it is difficult to bear the cost of the power generation infrastructure. At this time, the user will have to bear the cost of the wasted part of the energy company, and the electricity bill will rise; if the supply is insufficient, the electricity bill will also rise, and power shortages may cause power outages and other accidents.

What Wal-Mart's system does is to schedule between power consumption. Since this technology has not yet been applied, we use the community as an example. Residents usually have solar panels, and each home is equivalent to a distributed node of an energy company. Electric energy can be transmitted in a supply-demand network to achieve a relatively stable state.