Hi Pieter,
No problem. The project is about digital guarantees of origin (from green energy production). And a system for the certified consumption of those. It intents to improve the quality of the supply of green energy from the perspective of the consumer.
Consumption of energy sees much effort put in monitoring and control. With producton of (green) energy this counts more or less the same, but the level of detail is much lower. Green energy is difficult to "supply" over the grid. When the matter is produced and brought to the consumer, certificates of origin (guarantees) are used as a proof to give evidence of supply.
All certificates are digital. This means a logical connection can be made when consuming meters would be securely connected with the digital certificates. In this way an energy balance can be introduced (so much energy produced, so much energy consumed). And as soon as a secure communicating periphery has enough potential, the level of detailed supply of e.g. solar energy comes into range.
An example. One can set up a solar production site on a large roof in the neighbourhood. This facility can easily be connected to the grid with a separate metered grid connection. Shareholders funding the solar project are entitled to consume their part. Whith an energy-account in place, the produced amount of energy for the share-part can be booked on this account. Also the consumption of the shareholder can be booked from the same account.
Another example is wind at sea, like from
http://www.meewind.nl
At this organisation one can buy shares in a windpark that still has to be build. One share is EUR 1000,-. Many times buyers make the suggestion also to recieve the energy from the windpark. For this idea, the energy-account is a nice solution. In a wind rich period the balance will be positive. In a wind poor period the balance will be negative. Showing the real-time balance is an interesting option. Just like with a bank-account, from time to time users will take a look and make decisions to buy more share, sell surplus or change their supply. After a longer period, one can decide e.g. to change the fridge to a better efficiency class. And thus reduce the amount of energy needed from the total production quantity to cover the energy consumption.
In general, the energy-account works more or less in the same way as a bank-account.
This is step 1 of the plan, difficult enough to understand. A vision for the next step ahead: the introduction of interactivity. This can is based on two different elements, price and environmental values. Interactivity enables introduction of automated trading of surplus or shortage. Forecasting can be improved on a more detailed level e.g. sensor-based. All these elements together can make domotics more interesting for the energy efficiency. That is a step further on the roadmap of smart (micro) grids.
Efficiency is about improving tools to be efficient. The tools should be supportive to our common sense.
E-bert