On Monday, July 16, the Department of Energy (DoE) announced the list of almost 100 winners of the governmental grant which is part of the agency’s second phase of the program to support small innovative businesses– Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR). This program is planned to last for two years.
Grid7
This Blockchain-based startup is to receive almost $1 mln. The total amount of the grants is $95 mln and it will be distributed between small-scale companies in over 26 US states in an attempt to develop the US energy industry by means of breakthrough technologies.
Grid7 is reported to have already obtained a grant of approximately $150,000 last year– that was the first stage of the SBIR.
In an interview, the DoE management mentioned that only those startups that proved their abilities to produce innovative solutions and approaches were allowed to proceed from stage 1 of the program to stage 2.
The startup consists of three people and on its website, it says that the company plans to create a decentralized solar energy system, which would be able to collect energy data from households, office buildings and electric grids in a distributed way. The aim is to protect power plants against hacker attacks.
US government starts favoring Blockchain
This grant program arranged by the DoE is not the only recent US government initiative aimed to support the distributed ledger technology. The lawmakers in the state of Colorado have lately begun advocating a Blockchain-friendly environment.
Back in January, the local Senate implemented a draft law aiming to replace the current data collection process and maintenance mechanism with those based on Blockchain in order to increase the level of data safety. The bill was approved in May and later on came into force.
Dan Burgin
Alex Dovbnya