Demonstrating a Multi-Connected Energy Grid With Distributed Charge - BIKE and the Bitaxe
Overview
The goal of Distributed Charge is to create a decentralized energy grid. That means that sellers and buyers set and accept prices and make and receive payments directly.
In this demonstration, we have Alice, Bob, and Charlie.
Alice is an electrical energy producer that sells energy to Bob. Alice and Bob are connected using Distributed Charge - GRID. Alice wants to have dominance in the market and set prices as high as she can. Bob wants to consume energy, but he doesn't want Alice to charge him more than a free market price.
There is also Charlie. Charlie wants some exercise. Bob will buy energy from Charlie whenever he is willing to sell it at a rate less than Alice. Charlie just wants some exercise, so sometimes he's willing pedal on Distributed Charge - BIKE and sell his work at a price less than Alice.
Bob buys whatever energy he can from Charlie. Alice feels the competition, so she wants to keep her prices low so that Bob doesn't try too hard to find another source of energy for when Charlie doesn't want any exercise.
Bob is excited to get energy cheaply from Charlie, so he also has a Hash Board that holds a Bitaxe bitcoin miner array. Charlie is excited to help keep the world's most sustainable monetary system secure, so he's even more incentivized to sell the energy he generates cheaply to Bob. Bob has the Bitaxe connected to the OCEAN mining pool and gets payouts using the lightning network for the computational work that he submits to OCEAN pool. He runs the Bitaxe whenever he can buy energy at a low cost.
Notice what is going on here: Bob receives energy from Alice and Charlie and pays bitcoin to them but Bob also receives bitcoin back from OCEAN pool. A circular economy is being created!
Since Bob has multiple suppliers for energy, there is no reason that Alice needs to be regulated by any centralized governing body. Bob directly pays her, and he directly measures how much energy she delivers before making his next payment. He's in full control of the business transaction. Bob's ability to purchase energy from Charlie puts pressure on Alice to never drive up prices to outrageous rates. Distributed Charge is a free market solution for regulating the energy grid through direct, private energy trade. No one is in control but directly connected peers and the laws of physics.
More about Distributed Charge - BIKE
BIKE is a portable tool to learn how a multi-connected energy grid could work. It allows a rider (Charlie) to pedal and generate direct current (DC) electrical energy. That DC energy is sent to an inverter where it is converted to alternating current (AC) and is sent to the buyer. BIKE measures the energy that is delivered and allows the rider to receive a payout on their mobile phone using an LNURL enabled bitcoin lightning wallet. When finished riding, they can either scan the QR code on the screen or tap with an NFC enabled phone to receive their payment over the bitcoin lightning network. When no user is pedaling, BIKE uses some power to keep it's control electronics on.
While riding, real-time power and an estimated hash rate are shown to the user, so it is a fun device to "feel" what it takes to mine bitcoin!
