This is a research project by SPACE10 about democratising access to clean energy … exploring ways to bring energy to 1.1 billion people who have little or no access to electricity. Neighbourhood generation could get around high investment costs for centralised energy networks where there is little incentive to innovate.

This miniature neighbourhood in wood has been built to a scale of 1:50 as a working prototype to show how some households could generate their own renewable energy using solar panels and some households would purchase excess electricity directly from the producer using block chain to make a self-sufficient community.

The scheme would include power storage to provide energy at night - now more feasible with the rapid development of batteries - and Blockchain technology could regulate the system for the sale of electricity and payments by verifying and recording transactions.

The project was a collaboration between SPACE10, Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration; WeMoveIdeas India and Blocktech with the model by Tempral and SachsNottveit.

SolarVille can be seen at SPACE10 until 29 March
SolarVille
SPACE10

SPACE10 have published a related online report
A Brighter Tomorrow