Peer-To-Peer Power To The People
Valo is here to make it possible for off-the-grid communities to manage their microgrid in secure, self-governing and decentralized way.
What is Valo?
Valo comes from the Finnish word ”Light”. To explain Valo we give you an example scenario:
An off-grid community that has some households that produce their own energy with solar panels. They decide to sell their excess electricity to their neighbours. The neighbours have no storage capabilities and
therefore are able to consume only when the weather permits. A third party joins that is willing to buy the excess that is not consumed during the peak production hours and store it in a battery. During low production
hours, the party sells what they have stored during the day.
This scenario raises couple of questions. Who handles the energy management? How to bill consumers and reward producers? How to collect the payments? Without trusted intermediary how to ensure trust?
The answer is Valo, a decentralized blockchain based system that allows communities to self-govern and manage their microgrids.
Valo brings you
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Real-Time Payments
Sell your excess energy through Valo and receive payments in real time in your Valo Wallet. Consumers load their Valo Wallet, which then autonomously verifies and settles bills addressed to it based on consumption.
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Decentralized & Local
Valo is not owned by central authority, there is also no globe spanning Valo network. Valo is decentralized and local. A Valo network instance per microgrid community. This allows that those who participate in the microgrid to be the ones that govern their network.
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Secure & Trustless
Valo network is secured by Ethereum smart contracts as it periodically communicates and makes commitments to it. Smart meters on the network run consensus protocols to agree on what should be added to Valo Plasma blockchain.
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Energy Management
Each smart meter on the network report their readings to Valo network, this allows the network to collectively to manage the energy. Valo network allows energy management through pricing, but it can be also used to implement complex Demand Response strategies.
Valo Plasma runs it all.
Valo Plasma is a child chain of Ethereum allowing it to inherit security of its parent. Valo Plasma runs on smart meters of a microgrid. Each smart meter verifies energy reports individually. As each new report is verified, it's added to the Valo Plasma blockchain, where it is recorded as a bill or a payout.
Powered by
Plasma
Plasma is layer two scaling solution for Ethereum. The concept of Plasma is that not every transaction has to be broadcasted on the chain, but it can be enforced on the chain. The plasma chain can be described a multiparty off-chain channel that can hold the state for others.
NOCUST
Non-custodial finance intermediary or NOCUST for short is introduced, which allows multiple parties to perform payments between one another with NOCUST acting as payment hub that facilitates the payments.