  The increasing amount of distributed energy resources including renewable
energy systems and electric vehicles is expected to change electric power grids
significantly, where conventional consumers are transformed to prosumers since
they can produce electricity as well. In such an ecosystem, prosumers can start
offering their excess energy to supply demands of the other customers on the
grids behind the meter without interference of distribution system operators
(DSO). Besides, DSOs require more accurate and more frequent data form
prosumers' net demand to be able to operate their network efficiently. The main
challenge in these new distribution grids is the amount of data that needs to
be collected in this platform is unbelievably high, and more immortally,
prosumers will likely refuse to share their information with DSOs due to their
potential privacy and economic concerns. Blockchain technology as an efficient
distributed solution for management of data and financial transactions, has
been considered to solve this trust issue. With blockchain-based solutions,
data and financial transactions between all parties will take placed through
distributed ledgers without any interference from an intermediary. In this
paper, impacts of blockchain technologies on electric power industry is
studied. The paper specifically focuses on LO3 Energy -- one of startups
applying blockchain to electric power grids -- their blockchain-based solution
called Exergy, and their use cases to implement such solutions.
