The block chain technology enables a direct confidence building without intermediaries and, based on this, a decentralized way of data storage and transaction mapping.

Due to these characteristics, its use in the energy industry is increasingly discussed and investigated. Possible fields of application are, for example, the decentralized verification of properties such as the type of energy generation as well as the trading of energy quantities.

Within the framework of the pilot project "Blockchain Machine ID Ledger", the German Energy Agency dena has been commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy to put the feasibility of a digital and decentralized directory for device identities into practice. As a complementary element to smart metering, such a directory for device identities will enable the millions of decentralized generation plants and consumption units such as heat pumps, stationary power storage units, electric vehicles and electrolysers to be integrated in a consistent, flexible and highly automated manner as active market players.

OFFIS was awarded the contract for the scientific monitoring and evaluation of the pilot project together with EY Law and Jacobs University. Thereby, technical, economic and regulatory implications of investigated variants of design and architecture decisions of a possible serial implementation of the Machine Identity Ledger for the energy system are in the foreground.