Blockchain company raises $40 million to further develop energy trading platform

WePower, an Estonian energy trading company, has raised $40 million via 22,933 contributors during its initial coin offering (ICO).

The company’s goal is to assist wind and solar developers to raise capital prior to construction by monetizing future electricity production in the form of unique, publicly trackable digital ‘coins.’ The company believes their techniques will add fluidity to the slow-moving, hard copy power purchase agreement. They do this by deploying digitally managed ‘smart contracts’ that allows electricity producers to easily add or remove energy buyers, versus creating a single 15-25 year agreement. They hope this technology creates a broader market for reselling clean energy credits globally, adding liquidity.

Smart meters provide WePower the ability to transparently record electricity production at a given time. This meter data is tied to a digitally stored and managed power purchase agreement – called a ‘smart contract’ in the blockchain world. The production and sale of the energy is updated in real time, generally every time 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity is produced.

In addition to this coin offering, WePower has received funding from a collection of other investors: Galaxy Investment Partners, DNA Fund, BlockchainIL, LDJ Capital, Science, OGroup/Kryptsu, PrimeBlock Capital, AlgoLedge, Connect Capital, and Everblue Capital.

WePower has focused its relationship development work with electricity utilities to integrate its technology.