When blockchain first appeared, especially Ethereum’s innovation of ‘smart contracts’, a number of people posited that it could be used to trade energy between one source and another, such as power supplies or batteries.

The idea would be to enable consumers to buy and sell renewable energy directly between one another, in a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading manner. Blockchain would be ideally suited to this, creating a transparent, auditable and automated record of energy generation and consumption. As a result, energy savings could be made, having a positive effect both on costs and the climate, according to techcrunch.com.

Few, however, have achieved this. Until now.

The Australian-born Power Ledger is now moving beyond trials and into the commercial deployment of its platform. It’s a sign that the market is not only open to the concept of peer-to-peer trading but ready to start implementing.

Power Ledger has partnered with the Clean Energy Blockchain Network, launching its first commercial deployment in the US at the Northwestern University Evanston campus. Power Ledger’s platform lets consumers buy and sell renewable energy directly between one another, using a blockchain platform, and will enable Northwestern University to trade clean energy both on-campus and between campuses with no hardware, software or subscription fees, by using pre-existing meters.

The commercial, utility-grade deployment will initially run across four buildings curated by Northwestern University’s Master of Engineering Management Program with plans for implementation to kick off in the coming months. On-campus P2P trading will be followed by connection to external peers across multi-campus universities, museums, laboratories and more.