Guardtime and Intrinsic ID Awarded Dutch Government Contract for Distributed Energy Marketplace via a Decentralized Trading Platform

Joint development will deliver secure distributed trading platform, enabling consumers to trade excess energy

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands and SUNNYVALE, Calif., United States – Oct. 23, 2017 – Guardtime and Intrinsic ID®, the world’s leading provider of digital authentication technology for Internet of Things security and embedded applications, announced the companies will jointly develop an energy trading platform to host a decentralized market for energy transactions. The platform will offer a virtual real-time marketplace integrating distributed energy resources from solar, wind and battery sources in which suppliers can sell energy to the grid by bidding into the market. It will leverage Intrinsic ID’s BROADKEY™, a secure key management software solution for IoT security, and Guardtime KSI Blockchain platform to bring leading security technology for a distributed seamless and automated trading platform.

The project is funded under a contract awarded by the Dutch government and the city of Rotterdam, and managed by BlockLab, a subsidiary of the Port of Rotterdam. BlockLab develops use cases with alliances including engineers, developers and end users, with a focus on energy and logistics.

“In the energy market a lot of capacity is not being utilized optimally. This award shows the vision of the Dutch government to transform energy markets from closed and centralized to open and distributed,” said Guardtime Chief Executive Officer Mike Gault. “We are thrilled to be partnering with Intrinsic ID to build a decentralized trading platform that brings the sharing economy to energy markets.”

Phase I of the project is a cloud-based demonstration with connected smart meters, combining the core strengths of the two companies. Intrinsic ID’s BROADKEY is a proven software solution for authentication of IoT devices, such as smart meters. Authenticating smart meters securely at a hardware level by means of software, identifying every member in the network, makes it impossible for unauthorized devices to join and brings the necessary level of security. Guardtime’s KSI Blockchain is used to ensure integrity and time of every event in the network – making them verifiable independently, regardless of vendors, distribution networks or service providers.

Phase II of the project will be a pilot solution in an operating environment to test the management of energy consumption at peak hours by a complex group of energy providers and brokers. The data is stored in a distributed ledger, providing a near-real-time shared view for all participants. Joining the ledger with unclonable identities provides access to authenticated, immutable data from smart meters – for both larger energy providers as well as homeowners with excess energy from solar panels. This enables new business models – such as switching between energy providers instantly, or preferring energy from a particular community – all based on interoperability provided by the KSI blockchain.

Guardtime and Intrinsic ID will conduct the pilot project in the Rotterdam area. The metropolitan region of Rotterdam and The Hague have a combined population of 2.2 million, with 1 million homes and 128 thousand companies – including the Port of Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe.

“This is a challenging target for piloting the energy platform, with high expectations for reliability and scalability – and of course security,” said Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic ID. “Such a shift, from central power plants serving consumers directly to an ecosystem where members have their own energy source and can trade excess energy, represents a significant change to market dynamics which could bring significant efficiency and cost savings.”

“We are very happy with the focus on securing the data input to the blockchain, as it is a fundamental condition for the entire system,” said Janjoost Jullens, energy lead of BlockLab. “Intrinsic ID was already on our radar and we have high expectations of the BROADKEY-blockchain combination.”

Intrinsic ID technology has wide applications for securing utility networks. The company recently joined the Wi-SUN Alliance, a global industry alliance promoting interoperable wireless-standards-based solutions for the IoT, and earlier this month exhibited at European Utility Week, where it demonstrated the use of BROADKEY to generate an unclonable device-unique identity for a smart meter, securing it with hardware-based authentication.

About Guardtime
Guardtime is the world’s leading blockchain platform company, using its KSI Blockchain stack to build enterprise, telecom and government solutions. The company was founded in Estonia in 2007, where it products are used to underpin Estonian digital society, and has since expanded with a presence in the UK, Middle East, Asia and the Americas. Example solutions that the company has built, working with industry partners, include GDPR compliance as service, physical anti-counterfeit, marine insurance data exchange, physical supply chain track and trace, digital content management, software lifecycle management, critical infrastructure protection and health-care interoperability.

About Intrinsic ID
Intrinsic ID is the world’s leading digital authentication company, providing unclonable identities for all Internet of Things devices in the world. Its security solutions, based on Intrinsic ID’s patented SRAM PUF technology, can be implemented in hardware and software, and are used to validate payment systems, secure connectivity, authenticate sensors, and protect sensitive government and military systems. Intrinsic ID’s award recognition includes the Frost & Sullivan Technology Leadership Award and the EU Innovation Radar Prize. Intrinsic ID security has been proven in millions of devices certified by Common Criteria, EMVCo, Visa and multiple governments. Visit Intrinsic ID online at www.Intrinsic-ID.com.