Faster switching of energy suppliers – a blockchain-based approach

Abstract

Only a small share of German households make use of the opportunity to regularly switch their electricity supplier in order to fulfill their needs. Besides the relatively low possible monetary savings, another reason is the fact of long running contracts. The process of supplier switching for stakeholders in the energy market is quite time-consuming. This is caused by inefficient design of the process steps due to a lack of automation, of common data management and of direct communication between these stakeholders. Two options for optimizing this by means of a blockchain-based system are described and discussed here. These allow simplified communication between participating parties and therefore potentially quicker completion of the process. They enable automation of the whole process, prevent delays due to inconsistent data and therefore, allow intraday switching. An exemplary proof-of-concept implementation on the Ethereum blockchain shows the feasibility of the approach. Nevertheless, the advantages and disadvantages when compared to an alternative automated implementation, which is not blockchain-based, are still to be thoroughly examined.