Disclaimer: Invest at your own risk. This is not an advisement for or against Grid Plus investment. Its for information purposes only. This is intended to make you think and envision the possibilities both to the potential benefits and pitfalls. We will not be responsible for any actions you take to invest or not invest in this or any other ICO or Current Coins in Circulation, Mining, Trading, and any use of the widgets, charts, or data on the site. Enjoy.
What is it?
Grid Plus + is an Ethereum based block chain technology startup
They seek to create a major upset in the field of home energy consumption, by bringing much needed sanity to what users continuously complain as the less than straightforward relationship energy suppliers have with them.
Grid+ is the block chain industry’s foray in home energy consumption management that comes with very fine tuned features that will definitely solve the nightmare of many households when it comes to managing their energy bills. Chief among Grid+’s many features is that it puts the energy consumer in direct control of their bills by offering them a hassle free seamless mechanism for managing their energy consumption.
With Grid+ home owners will now have an incorruptible arbiter that will monitor their energy consumption and lets them tweak or tone down when their set limits are getting dangerously close. With Grid+’s Smart Energy Agent, an IoT blockchain integrated hardware, the user will only pay for what they consume unlike before when the energy companies trash out numbers the user can’t dispute no matter how odd they looked.
Team
The Grid+ team is headed by CEO Mar DAgostino, with other notable members including Alex Miller, and Karl Kreder
Practical Users
If there was ever a real world and practical industry the block chain technology has ever gotten involved with, it’s the energy sector, as for every person this is an everyday reality. This is why Grid+’s venture cannot be more ambitious as it targets an industry whose worth can only be roughly estimated due to its humongous size.
Energy efficiency is a topic that is very close to the heart of the modern world partly due to the greater levels of awareness on the terrible effects of climate change, and partly because energy costs have been progressively climbing with customers feeling constantly cheated by the bills they receive from the energy providers.
Grid+ seeks to completely calm the sometimes tense relationship between energy providers and consumers by providing a neutral means of accurately quantifying the consumer’s energy use, paying them in real-time which is great for the provider and also gives the user an effective means to effortlessly tweak their use of electricity.
An effective energy consumption management system is long overdue in this industry, and Grid+ finally seems to have brought the answer? Lets see.
Mining For Grid Plus +?
Grid+ is a buy-in token and is not available by Cryptocurrency mining.
Investor’s Note
Grid+ Smart Energy Agent is going to truly bring much needed relief to the minds of millions of electricity consumers all over the world. Grid+ has far more features beyond the management of the consumer’s bill as it also allows them to buy energy and store when its cheap with the ability to sell it off when its prices peak.
Grid+ is an innovation that will truly bring something that has never been seen in the industry, they have targeted a real life market, and so far seem to have the technology figured out to bring their vision to reality. Ok thats the pump. But we will see.
Final GRID Token Numbers from 2 week token sale in 2017
39,236,491 tokens sold
0.0037 ETH Price per token
Total Raised 29 million
51 million GRID remained unsold after the two week sales period. The Team appears to not have any intentions on using the remaining tokens for operations and expenses and have thus chosen to lock 90 per cent of them up for a period of a year it seems. Something a bit wonky here. Seems the sale did not go as planned. The unsold grid tokens are now under a time lock contract that the founders moved them to here at the following address:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x9d175226f9e9c2d20513e9d9637ba2ba25131636
Website: https://www.gridplus.io/
Reddit: Grid+ has no Reddit page as of the time of writing this
Twitter: @gridplus_energy
Contact Phone?
Contact Email?
What Do I think of Grid Plus?
Grid+ with its token takes off the burden of worrying about not paying your energy bills on time as it pays the providers in real-time without you ever having to monitor it. (Good as long as you have money in your account) Of course alot of us live paycheck to paycheck.
Grid Plus will eventually be for the wealthy if it pans out
Grid Plus is probably going to help the wealthy or well off upper middle class save money on their bills. Doubtful the lower class less income families will use this as they probably do not have access to the batteries, and solar panels that others do to truly cash in on the capabilities of the technology down the road. (Where I see this leading to have any true advantage at all)
It is a good idea though, and may prove fruitful to those able to take advantage. Only time will tell. If rates go up and up, then paying every 15 minutes may hurt you during price spikes with no battery back up to draw from. Hard to say. We will have to see how it pans out. But I bet the people with the battery stored power will be selling to you at the high rates. Again, the need to have the ability to store your own electricity is key here with this system in my opinion. The battery and storage of electricity is key to this working out in the long run.
Grid Plus Will be No Good for the Poor
What I do think is that for everyday people who live from one pay to the next it may not be for you. If you do not have solar panels and batteries to use during price highs to save money, and also sell into the grid to make money then you wont get as much benefit if any.
I believe that if you can afford large battery reserves and solar grid panels to stock the electricity to sell when prices are high, and just pay direct when prices are low you will get a lot more out of this technology. Otherwise just pay your bill online each month like you do now.
Starting as a payment system Growing into a live commodity trading system
Seems to be a payment system cutting out utility retailers for now. I see it morphing into a glorified electricity trading device. Trading into and out of the grid at the best times and rates with stored electricity. Great for those who want to invest in the battery holding power to do so. However, with the grid only allowing so much on it at a time, I do not know how this will even work out. Again time will tell.
Common folk will just be told to use it to make and save with electricity costs cutting out the middleman from making it on the spread and costs of administration. The question is? Who owns the grid in each area this intends to be used, and will the electricity utilities in that area let Grid plus play in the sandbox nicely with them? Plus there is very little area this can be used as the number of states is very limited with a deregulated electricity market where Grid plus intends to market. Which is why Texas is ground zero. This system is going to attract real time speculation in electricity markets is what I predict.
Big Hurdles Still at Grid+
They still have to set up licencing to operate in their initial market of Texas and that will be 1.5 million or so. They are also setting up offices and hiring employees. They also talk of setting up a retailer But I thought we were trying to get rid of the retailer in all of this? Scratching my head…. So how do you save on retailer costs and billing when you are now setting up a retailer for billing?
Oh ya I just read now in the latest report, that’s the last phase where you try to hand over the reins you have built up to a decentralization process in the end. (We will see) What is to stop you from keeping control and claim it deemed necessary for stability in the market, even though it will be the money your making which will be the real reason not to let go. (If it all even gets that far)
Is Grid Plus Just going to be another Retailer?
Could we not just suggest you are trying to set up and become the new retailer in the unregulated market but instead of paper billing you are just switching to another meter on top of the smart meters to meter the electricity and pay with a different form here? ie blockchain? That’s what it seems like.
This just seems like a new electricity retailer start up to me in a deregulated market of Texas, funded by an ICO, where the only good thing about it is the ability to buy and sell electricity as a consumer back to the grid. (Which I like) but are no where close to doing at all yet. There are so many hurdles to jump through still. Ok I’m sure the answer I would get is no, but for now that’s what it is until it grows into the battery and solar part of the system.
What about costs for the Units and Payback times?
In addition: How much are these grid plus units going to cost? Are they free with purchase of grid plus tokens? NO, there is a pay back time associated with it they state. No costs for the unit have been described, and they have to be purchased up front, and who knows how long the payback would be, how well they will work, if they will break down, be any good, etc. So in the end, again its just another electrical utility except they still need to start up!
In the end how will people save on owning this if your looking to bypass retail utilities for savings, yet you are becoming one yourself to initiate the process? I do not think you can. Again this brings around full circle to the point I think this is only good as a trading device in the actual raw asset of electricity and not as a payment means at all.
Potential Problems in the Future with Grid Plus
- High cost to payback ratio of grid+ device
- Battery costs and solar panel costs
- General costs of licensing and marketing
- Acceptance of the system
- Speculation in Electricity Markets
- Costs to set up or to join into pools of batteries and solar panel companies
- Deregulation leading to large corporate takeovers of the blockchain system through managing huge battery and solar farms to “mine and store” real electricity and sell back to the masses at inflated rates. Meaning manipulation of markets by big players through decentralization pushing out the smaller players.
Something to think about:
I know its not the same in general, but just thought I would throw out there how bitcoin mining is now super expensive and consumes tons of electricity. Hmmm. Now small players in mining for bitcoin have been pushed out and only large scale miners with deep pockets make any money and the price of bitcoins is super high.
Not to mention the fact that it forked off into bitcoin cash. Will this grid+ system eventually fork off into single home, neighborhood, city, state entities? Maybe eventually if it does become decentralized it will become a true way to get off the grid while being on the grid………
Now I am thinking even more, why not have the grid plus system just monitor and store and control your own off grid battery and solar powered little entity. See? For the rich, not the poor. Sell those extra kilowatts into the system and live off the grid for free.
Now I do want one, but I want the whole system though which is not near ready yet as I just envisioned what it could be. Also it needs to be affordable. Once I can get the grid plus, batteries, and solar all set up and then tapped into my house for my own use, I would then want a secondary reserve set of storage batteries tapped into the grid to sell back to the masses or to trade with one another.
The question remains, how much to do all this? Will it be within my reach? Or will big entities take over the idea and shut out the little guy eventually or shut this whole thing down. No one likes to lose what they have. Good luck getting the retail and now even the wholesalers of electricity to go along with this.
It will have to all be developed from the inside out. Eventually not even needing the wholesale electrical producers at all once we all start harnessing electricity ourselves. Now that’s true decentralization as I see it.
Comments (No)