WePower and Mojo combine to offer blockchain-enabled Retail PPAs

Blockchain-enabled renewable energy marketplace WePower has announced that it delivered its technology for retail power purchase agreements (Retail PPAs), also known as Elemental, to Mojo Power. 

The handover sees the imminent establishment of the Mojo Marketplace, where small business and corporate customers to purchase locally produced renewable energy in the form of a standard retail energy contract, something nascent for the Australian market. 

By way of explanation, WePower’s CTO and Co-founder, Kaspar Kaarlep, told pv magazine Australia how electricity generated by the Robinvale Solar Farm in Victoria (VIC) can now reach business customers. “The initial wholesale PPA between Robinvale’s owners and Mojo is tokenised by WePower and stored on the Ethereum blockchain so that it can be structured into smaller retail PPAs and made available to these customers.” Thanks to the clear and trackable blockchain technology this tokenisation forms a “direct contractual link between the generating project and the end customer’s energy purchase.” 

Ultimately then, the technology allows WePower to form itself into the “connective tissue” between industry consumers and renewable energy generators. For consumers it means easier access to said energy in an online shopping environment, and for producers it means easier access to consumers. 

“With wholesale energy prices at historic lows due to the surge in renewable generation capacity in Australia, retail PPAs provide energy users with exposure to these low wholesale prices,” continued Kaarlep, “effectively locking in savings over traditional retail energy for the life of the contract.”

Unfortunately, businesses which have already installed their own solar systems cannot contribute to the virtual power plant (VPP) at this time but, as Kaarlep notes, “they can supplement their retail PPA purchase with solar power generated behind the meter. Such ‘behind the meter’ generation and storage can be readily incorporated into the retail agreement. It’s contribution to the overall supply will be tracked by the Marketplace alongside the external renewable project.”  

Mojo also has contracts with the Riverina Solar Farm in NSW, and several more large-scale solar farms throughout VIC, NSW, and Queensland (QLD). Generation from these farms will eventually be added to the Mojo Marketplace along with multiple other agreements currently in the pipeline.