Decentralized Systems in Energy and Telecom Industries

Did you know that in 2024, Geodnet grew revenues by over 500% YoY, proving that decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) are more than just a crypto buzzword? From powering autonomous vehicles to offering decentralized cloud compute, DePIN projects are quietly reshaping industries like telecom, energy, storage, and AI. Real-World Use Cases: Where DePIN Shines 1. GEODNET – Fixing GPS Precision  Problem: Traditional GPS lacks centimeter-level precision. Solution: Geodnet improves geospatial accuracy by 100x, powering applications in autonomous vehicles, agriculture, and smart cities. Revenue Model: Data licensing, node fees, and industry partnerships. 📈 500% revenue growth YoY, with a $2.2M run rate in 2024. 2. Helium – Revolutionizing Wireless Networks  Problem: Building traditional mobile networks costs billions. Solution: Helium’s decentralized wireless network leverages community-owned hotspots, providing affordable mobile and IoT connectivity. Revenue Model: Consumer mobile plans ($20/month) and carrier offloading fees. 📈 Over 100k direct mobile subscribers and projected $50M annual revenue. 3. Akash – Decentralizing Cloud Compute ☁️ Problem: Traditional cloud providers are costly and centralized. Solution: Akash offers a decentralized compute marketplace, lowering costs for AI developers and startups. Revenue Model: Marketplace fees and compute resource leasing. 📈 $2.5M annual revenue, driven by a 33x increase in GPU demand. Why This Matters for Companies ✅ Cut Costs: Helium enables telecom providers to offload data at a fraction of the cost. ✅ Enhance Reliability: Geodnet’s high-precision geospatial data is critical for industries like defense and smart cities. ✅ Scale Seamlessly: Akash provides flexible cloud compute, perfect for AI workloads. 🌐 Collaborations to Watch What’s exciting? Companies like Solana, Peaq, and Arweave are collaborating with DePIN projects to provide underlying blockchain infrastructure, oracles, and storage solutions. Together, they’re creating a robust ecosystem that can scale globally. Whether you're building in telecom, AI, or IoT, DePIN offers a new way to optimize operations, reduce costs, and unlock new revenue streams. Curious how your company can leverage this growing trend? Let’s connect and explore the possibilities! 🚀 #DePIN #Blockchain #Decentralization #Telecom #AI #CloudComputing #SmartCities #FutureOfInfrastructure

🔌Hybrid Microgrids (HMG) are energy systems, where AC and DC components, including sources, loads, and energy storage components, can be connected to respective subgrids, thus reducing the number of power conversion stages. The HMG excels in applications prioritizing reliability and power quality. The mixed systems enhance power ride-through capability and improve voltage profiles in AC distribution networks. The HMG can serve as a „virtual“ active power filter or perform reactive power compensation.🔦 Having both AC- and DC systems, their respective advantages can be exploited, and either of the systems can act as the host for traditional loads and sources and as an energy buffer, while the other extends the system for new applications such as EV-Charging and handles the peak-power-requirements. ⚡HMG Primary Control manages the inverter's output, employing fast inner-current and outer-voltage-loops. A crucial aspect is power-sharing control, exemplified by droop control. It can be centralized, which is challenging to implement in larger installations, or decentralized. The figure shows an example of a decentralized bi-directional droop-control technique, utilizing a normalized per-unit range for proportional power-sharing. The figure illustrates the normalized Frequency and Voltage on AC- and DC-subgrids respectively. 🍃Secondary control, or Microgrid Energy Management System (EMS), ensures economical and reliable Microgrid operation. Centralized options include optimization-based supervisory control, where cost functions maximize renewable utilization while minimizing fossil fuel usage. When various RES are available, a Coordinated Controller can be deployed to optimize their usage. Using a state-machine approach, a supervisory controller can be deployed for isolated hybrid microgrids to achieve optimal performance of used energy storage and renewable sources. Decentralized approaches for secondary control employ multilevel power exchange control or a hierarchical decentralized coordinated control using multi-agent-based event-triggered approaches. Distributed secondary control facilitates communication between local controllers for voltage and frequency regulation, employing optimized average consensus algorithms in autonomous AC-coupled microgrids, which can be used for frequency restoration through multi-stage load shedding when primary reserves are insufficient. More about various controllers of HMG can be found at https://lnkd.in/ddjFWcXW. #microgrids #storage #electrification #powerelectronics #renewables    

This edition, like to discuss on how we can apply blockchain, Crypto, to the electric utility industry transactions. I believe, one of the most critical large-scale commercial-financial transaction types involves power purchase agreements (PPAs) between utilities and independent power producers (IPPs). These long-term contracts define the purchase, delivery, and settlement of electric power—often including renewable energy—based on agreed terms over 10 to 25 years. Traditionally, these transactions involve manual negotiation, centralized contract storage, multiple intermediaries for settlements, and recurring disputes over meter readings or billing. With the integration of emerging technologies such as distributed ledgers, tokens, initial coin offerings (ICOs), and machine learning (ML), this entire process can be reimagined to reduce friction, increase transparency, and accelerate trust. In this digital framework, certain elements of the PPA transaction can remain open to human oversight, such as contract negotiation terms or the dynamic pricing logic based on market conditions. These flexible areas allow utilities to respond to regulatory changes or extreme weather impacts. However, key components—such as metered energy delivered, payment calculations, and settlement terms—should be sealed and cryptographically validated on a blockchain ledger to ensure they are immutable and auditable. Tokens can be used to represent units of energy or payment credits, and smart contracts can automatically trigger payments when verified conditions are met, eliminating delays and disputes. Machine learning further adds value by forecasting generation, optimizing consumption, and identifying anomalies, thereby enhancing the accuracy of automated settlements. As these transactions become automated and decentralized, control shifts. IPPs and utilities gain transparency and faster payments, but centralized intermediaries, such as third-party settlement agencies and traditional clearinghouses, may lose their roles. Regulators gain real-time access to validated transaction records, increasing oversight without adding burden. The strategic consideration most impactful to the utility sector is the move from centralized control to decentralized validation and execution, as discussed in the module. This shift fosters a trustless environment where transaction integrity is guaranteed by technology, not by institutions. For an industry under pressure to modernize and become more customer- and climate-responsive, this evolution not only cuts operational costs but enables new business models—such as prosumer trading, renewable energy certificates, and dynamic load management—essential to the future grid.

The #energytransition represents a massive opportunity for innovative software companies to connect decentralised energy generation assets, facilitate direct power purchase agreements and support load balancing vehicle-to-grid infrastructure. As an investor in industry solutions for the manufacturing industry and the built environment, stable grids and more efficient markets to procure renewable energy are big focus area for KOMPAS VC. I had the opportunity to highlight some of the most exciting energy software companies in this latest Sifted piece by Freya Pratty including tem., Enode and ev.energy. tem. facilitates energy procurement between decentralised energy generation assets (of which there are 22,000 in the UK alone), bypassing the wholesale market and identifying the best match between buyers and asset owners. Companies like Tem. are primed to take advantage of the rapid growth of decentralised energy generation assets and the massive time lag to connect these new assets to the grid. Enode has developed a digital platform to connect energy products such as electric vehicles, batteries, heaters, and other energy assets with an application programming interface and integrates them into the app to optimize energy consumption and support the grid balancing market with connected hardware. UK-based ev.energy provides managed EV charging solutions, featuring the most extensive vehicle and charger integrations in the industry. The company is working with 55 utilities across North America and Europe and recently received a US$41 million grant from the California Energy Commission to scale incentive-based EV programmes. Both companies are critical in facilitating grid balancing by supporting the roll out of vehicle-to-grid infrastructure. We are also pleased to see that the article features investment picks from our co-investors Nick de la Forge (Planet A Ventures) and Daria Saharova (World Fund). Shout out also to Craig Douglas and Will Dufton (Giant Ventures) for sharing their top picks. To read more, visit https://lnkd.in/eKrBUAri Thorvald Thorsnes Mathilde Tuv Kverneland Sabina Wizander Nick Woolley Joe McDonald