SBIR Phase I: Transforming Complex Utility Transaction Management

SBIR 第一阶段：转变复杂的公用事业交易管理

• 批准号: 1842614
• 负责人: Rob Norris
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: ENERGYXCHAIN, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-02-01 至 2020-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1842614&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Transforming; Complex; Utility

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is empowering the 68 million U.S. natural gas consumers to know their transaction status in real time, have more and continual control of their transactions, settle transactions in increments less than the industry?s current monthly accounting cycle and enjoy an extremely high level of security. Their transaction cost will be reduced and speed increased, freeing industry capacity and resources to be employed elsewhere at greater value. This innovation will allow others in the natural gas industry to better consider transaction processes and themselves innovate - employing many minds on industry efficiency. This innovation will also have application to other industries characterized by multiple complex, multi-party transactions; particularly the electric utility industry and possibly providing the catalyst for more extensive deregulation and consumer control.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to discover how to transform complex natural gas utility transaction management processes using Blockchain innovations and related technologies across production, transmission, distribution and consumption functions. The United States utility industry has operated in its present physical form for more than a century. Over the past four decades the industry has evolved through various policy and regulatory actions to open transaction participation to thousands of parties. During the past two decades, digital technologies enabled transaction functions to talk to each other and perform some functions automatically. Despite this progress, utility transaction management processes are essentially those created decades ago. They still require significant human intervention, remain highly segmented and employ little digital intelligence and security technology available today. The various technologies now supporting the industry?s seven step transaction processes will be mapped, assessed for Blockchain technology application and then consolidated into a single platform. The key challenge is to create transformative technology integrating the numerous other existing technology applications and data exchange formats and protocols without succumbing to customization which then mutes the transformative nature of the innovation and renders it ineffective as a platform to subsequent industry innovation by multiple parties.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 项目具有更广泛的影响/商业潜力，使 6800 万美国天然气消费者能够实时了解其交易状态，对其交易进行更多且持续的控制，以低于行业当前每月会计周期的增量结算交易，并享受极高的安全性。它们的交易成本将降低，速度将提高，从而释放行业产能和资源，以更大的价值在其他地方使用。这项创新将使天然气行业的其他人能够更好地考虑交易流程并进行自身创新——在行业效率方面发挥多种作用。这项创新也将适用于以多种复杂、多方交易为特征的其他行业；特别是电力行业，并可能为更广泛的放松管制和消费者控制提供催化剂。SBIR 第一阶段项目旨在探索如何利用区块链创新和跨生产、传输、分配和消费功能的相关技术来转变复杂的天然气公用事业交易管理流程。美国公用事业行业以其目前的实体形式已经运营了一个多世纪。在过去的四十年中，该行业通过各种政策和监管行动不断发展，向数千方开放交易参与。在过去的二十年中，数字技术使交易功能能够相互通信并自动执行某些功能。尽管取得了这些进展，但公用事业交易管理流程本质上还是几十年前创建的流程。它们仍然需要大量的人工干预，仍然高度细分，并且很少采用当今可用的数字智能和安全技术。目前支持该行业七步交易流程的各种技术将被映射、评估以用于区块链技术应用，然后整合到一个平台中。关键的挑战是创建集成众多其他现有技术应用程序和数据交换格式和协议的变革性技术，而不屈服于定制，从而削弱创新的变革性本质，并使其作为多方后续行业创新的平台无效。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。