Srcful - Decentralized Virtual Power Plant

[VoSrcful]

Introduction

Srcful primarily exists to accelerate and facilitate the expansion of renewable energy sources.Over the past two years, our project has been dedicated to enhance the use of solar panels and home batteries, known as Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), in urban and suburban homes. This initiative resulted in the development of the Energy Gateway, a device designed to link DERs and collaboratively form a DePIn Virtual Power Plant. Members are incentivised by receiving tokens for their participation and collectively contribute to a more intelligently managed energy system. Through this approach, we aim to expand to a scale where we can offer services, which are currently accessible only to larger-scale Energy Resources controlled by larger energy companies.

During this time frame, we have formed a strong core team, developed software to support our vision, established 10 beta sites in households to evaluate the functionality of the Energy Gateway. Additionally, we have ensured the capability to read and control inverters in real-time and display data on https://srcful.io/ . We’ve just started giving SRC token (SPL22 token) rewards for our beta members for connecting their Solar PV and batteries.

What’s Next?
We’re just launching a DIY, open-source version of the Energy Gateway, essentially a Raspberry Pi and a crypto chip with our firmware. This setup connects to an inverter and sends data over the members home network. For those with Helium hotspots we also offer support for dual rewards in the form of Helium IoT and SRC tokens. The focus for Srcful is to expand the community for our virtual power plant. We want to have more than 50 Energy Gateways live before starting with our post beta phase token distribution plan. The more members we have, the stronger our challenge against big energy companies and the greater our profit from services like ancillary services. We’re counting on your support to grow and succeed together.

Describe your project in 5 sentences:
We are a DePIn community-driven virtual power plant whose members are rewarded for sharing their energy data in an open and transparent way. Collectively we aim to provide the means for decentralization, decarbonization, and digitalization of the energy system.

Tell us about your team:

• X: @Frahlg: Series entrepreneur, PhD in energy engineering and AI, +10 years of experience as a navy officer.
• X: @Leitet: +20 years as educator in software development. +10 years in crypto and blockchain
• X: @kneeclass: +10 years experience in software architecture. +5 years developer smart of contracts
• X: @SrcfulViktor: +5 years business dev. manager in the Energy sector. Economist and experienced project manager large scale batteries for energy services.
• X: @DMozartAndraws: +5 years experience in hardware architecture and system integration. Experienced engineer and consulting in IoT.
• X: @T0bias0lss0n: +20 years experience in software architecture and development. PhD in Computer Science
• Joakim T: Community Manager, web developer specializing in IT security. Plays a key role in community engagement and growth.
• Jacob I K: Designer and Web Developer enhancing user experience and interface design for our applications.

Founder team involved in various crypto communities over the years, especially early in developing the Helium IoT network in Europe.

Jupiter Ecosystem and you

Main pitch on how the product collaborates with the Jupiter & Solana ecosystem: Our product, designed primarily for homeowners with solar panels/batteries, uniquely bridges the gap between the traditional energy sector and the crypto world. By targeting this demographic, we’re expanding the reach of the Solana and Jupiter ecosystems, introducing a new audience to the benefits of web3 and crypto. Srcful utilizes Jupiter for purchases, sales, and burning activities conducted by Srcful, while Solana and its wallets are used for device administration, onboarding, and token rewards. In the future we plan on using Solana to share validated real time energy data in a more open and transparent way than has ever existed. We strongly believe that this data will be pivotal in creating services for a more resilient and fair energy system.

Partners, Supporters, and Collaborative Efforts: Over the past few years, we’ve been in close communication with the Helium Foundation, seeking advice and sharing experiences to find the best ways to collaborate for go to market strategies and technical implementations. Srcful is government backed and has received financial backing from the Swedish Energy Agency, recognizing our innovative contributions to the energy system. Additionally, one of Sweden’s largest universities has provided financial backing to Srcful for its market introduction. So far, we’ve managed without venture capital funding, instead relying on bootstrapping by the founding team.

Potential synergies between you and Jupiter users, DAO, holders, etc.: By targeting this demographic, we’re expanding the reach of the Solana and Jupiter ecosystems, introducing a new audience to the benefits of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Approximate date for TGE: In January 2024, we began issuing token rewards to our beta contributors. For more details on this, you can visit our documentation at Distribution | srcful (still subject to change and we would welcome any input)

Vision Category

If your project were to succeed, how would it fundamentally change the web3 space?

If Srcful succeeds, it would not only showcase Web3’s potential in the energy sector but also transform how we conduct economic transactions with energy. The success of Srcful would serve as a real-life example of blockchain’s practical applications, revolutionizing both the energy sector and the way we manage and transact energy in our homes and communities.

What would you say are your biggest challenges or obstacles as a project?

Regulatory Compliance, Navigating the complex regulatory landscape of the energy sector, especially when implementing tokenomics and decentralized models.

What advice would you give to another team launching a token in web3?

When launching a Web3 token, release early, be transparent and use community feedback for improvements. This helps accelerate development and aligns your project closer to user needs.

What is something most tokens get wrong, and what steps are you taking to ensure that you won’t experience these pitfalls?

For tokens related to other DePIN projects, the focus should be on ensuring real demand for what the community collectively builds. It’s crucial not to focus too much on just building supply. This approach helps in creating a token that has practical value and utility, not just theoretical or speculative appeal.

Appendix/About

Website:
https://srcful.io/

Socials links
X: https://twitter.com/srcful
LinkedIn: Srcful | LinkedIn

Community links
Discord: https://discord.gg/8K9Gh3bd

GitHub: Srcful · GitHub

Your Energy. Your Power.

[c2yptic]

Being a fan of the tabletop game “Powergrid” this really vibed with me hehe.

This also reminds me of powerledger (POWR) which I was following back in the days. Are there any similarities there?

[leitet]

Love the game my self ! You are ahead of things, but we can out that we actually will announce interesting news about this really soon. Connecting physical hardware like solar and batteries is one way to support the grid and our main focus right now. Another one is to be a warden of the playing field.

[VoSrcful]

Srcful Energy Gateway. Interested in the DIY version? Read more: GitHub - srcfl/egw-diy: This repository contains instructions for building a Srcful-compatible Energy-Gateway.

[h0bb3]

Also regarding Powerledger, there are similarities i.e. the vision of decentralized energy trading. I would guess the biggest difference at the moment is that we are building this from the bottom up - i.e., starting with the individual producer, collecting the data, and giving rewards for this. Then we build the control, the market, and trading on top of this. Power ledger seems more like a trading platform. Then there are technical differences such as we build on Solana, not our own blockchain. We are aiming for full transparency and community with e.g. open source etc.

[vitytradez]

Regulatory Compliance - Can you expand more on some of the hurdles and strategies to navigate these obstacles?

[VoSrcful]

Thanks for a very relevant question!
The biggest global challenges are that the regulations around energy and power markets are very nationally adapted, and for example, just in the EU there are national adaptations despite efforts to establish uniform regulatory frameworks going forward.

This is something we were of course aware of even before we started Srcful, and our approach is therefore to view everyone who connects their distributed energy sources with an Energy Gateway as members and contributors within Srcful. The inverters available in the market and how they communicate (for example, there are standards like Sunspec) are quite standardized since relatively few brands dominate globally.

Those who become customers in the Srcful ecosystem are various types of energy service providers, which will have different geographical focuses and thus be specialized in the regulatory frameworks applicable to each country. This means that we, as a community-driven Virtual Power Plant, can offer fairly standardized services such as data around energy production, support for shutting down or limiting energy production, which is the primary function for offering ancillary services. It will then be the responsibility of the customer (the energy service provider) to handle trading in these markets and to follow national regulations, while we collectively can take care of the technical functions. In our design, we have based our approach on the regulations in the Nordic market, which we know are some of the strictest and most advanced regulations globally.

[AtomicKnight]

Given the hugely protective conglomerate nature of the global Energy Sector (for example, in the UK there has been great uproar of how electricity is still (incorrectly) linked to gas prices, despite it’s energy increasingly coming from alternative (and greener energy sources, such as wind, solar, waves etc)) - despite calls for updates to respect the true price, it is not in the interest of the energy companies to comply (so as they are not compelled to, they don’t), plus massive differences in price of energy via each country (and regulations), this will be a major task. I am relieved that you are focussing on Nordic countries first (given the support you have there already), particularly with Sweden. It is an ambitious project. The commericialization of the data gathered will likely be the main focus, the trading aspect is extremely difficult, but I look forward to seeing how you tackle these hurdles.

[tcp]

would love to see more about how this is metered,
years ago people used to put a penny in the metre to stop it moving,
people always find a way to fiddle they system

[VoSrcful]

Hi thanks for your relevant input regarding the energy markets. Yes in this early stage we have a focus on the commercialization of gathered data.

But in addition, we also create the conditions necessary to provide ancillary services (market for the power). This means acting as a reserve for the electrical grid and getting paid to temporarily shut down (or if you have a battery also increase) production if the network requires it due to a sudden drop in consumption for example.

We extracted some images from a report where they have categorized the difficulty of participating with Ancillary Services in the respective markets in Europe. It should be added that only in recent years have there been significant advancements in terms of opportunities for smaller energy resources to be aggregated and participate collectively (which is Srcful’s purpose). In the images, there are also some numbers on market demand for the Swedish market, as they are very transparent about the monetary demand).

Srcfuls customers will be Energy Service providers who will handle the trading and regulations for each country as we grow large enough to deliver in more countries, not just Europe.

[bullshit_sniffer]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

For caring about this planet and humanity.

This is the only project from what I can see on the ballot, that is actually trying to make some meaningful change. Though lots of room for improvement… its clear these guys are super smart and know something about this field that we don’t.

This is addressing an important slice of the topic of “energy” which actually @meow touched upon during Luke’s talk.

Some things that may not be so obvious to people:

• This does not involve the trading or sharing of energy (but it could in the future). but it sounds like there is a specific use case for this that would allow the programmatic pulling back of energy usage (of many homes in an area) from the standard energy grid to relieve pressure; since this aux source can be relied upon.

• This can morph into solutions that can provide freedom to households, by making it easier to harvest our own energy. (lower cost of ownership + perhaps a marketplace of ready-to-go diy micro-energy solutions? - I think this is important)

• How about the cascading effects this can have to behavior and mentality? “wow, i can harvest my own energy… what else can I do to be more self-reliant and resilient?”. ie. Grow my own food, make my own shit, use my own sht (search “Methanogenesis”)

Would like to see more projects like this in the future.
Good luck!

[Pandamunk]

So to clarify for others. This project:

• rewards people with coin if they are using some green energy source

—-> which will reduce the cost of ownership of these systems (given there is enough value in that coin)

Kind of similar to helium rewards.
That is the primary near term value.

And there are other practical ideas you have in the future to provide more utility.

[thewolfofcrypto]

The Helium hotspot dual rewards option is a nice touch which will bring the community towards the project. I’ve been following Helium for a while now with plans of getting a new hotspot opening a chance to earn this project tokens as well. Puts the space in a different viewpoint which will onboard a lot of new users to the space that probably never thought they would get into. Saving the environment at the same time this is a neat project. Good luck to the team.

[andrewsaul]

Sorry, late to this. Totally okay if you don’t respond.
I’m really interested in decentralised energy and the blockchain. Seems a good product market fit. The ability to trade energy locally just makes sense (even if technically speaking it is a fair way off).

I like data sharing as a first step, but why pitch this a decentralised power plant? It’s not. To get there there is just so much that needs to happen.
Why not pitch this as a data aggregation for energy data, using token incentives, and partner with someone like Pyth to package up and sell that feed to fund the next steps in moving to power coordination?
I fear a good idea might get lost in the fact that the top level idea is still so far off.

[TheVillageDao]

How does this virtual power plant product fit into the market in relation to Tesla’s AutoBidder Powerwall Virtual Power Plant? Is this technology a competitor, or does it have the potential to be synergistic and integrate with other diverse platforms? Could this be considered a “winner-take-most” technology? How do you see the market in 2 years?

[Merlin-M-Ostermann]

Any recent updates to share with the Cat-dets?