The original project diagrams for pebbles were drawn up in something of a hurry in spring 2017 in application for Smart Service World II funding. The original idea for pebbles was born out of an IREN2 project consortium meeting. It was clear to us that there was huge value in the know-how we had built up through IRENE and IREN2, as well as in the hardware we had built at the Wildpoldsried energy campus for those projects. It would therefore be desirable to use these resources for further research. This was around the same time that the value of the BitCoin soared and many people became aware of the potential of blockchain technologies for all kinds of applications. On top of that, the energy transition was increasingly moving towards decentralised forms of energy generation and everything slotted together – why not process all transactions using a blockchain? That is our vision.

Our design was approved by the expert panel at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in May 2017. That was when work really began. Within the consortium, ideas had to be pinned down and recorded in detail so that a full project application could be submitted to the project management agency, the German Aerospace Center, by September. It was a tense time that strengthened ties within the consortium and dealt with many of the question marks in the original plans.

We are proud of getting pebbles off the ground and knowing that over the next three years we will now be able to investigate and discover the possibilities of the future of energy. We even hope that it will contribute to a move to 100% renewable energy generation in the foreseeable future.