Important Notices

Solara Limited makes no representation, warranty or

undertaking that the information provided in this
White Paper is truthful, accurate and complete. This
White Paper has been prepared for information
purposes only and is not a statement of future intent.
Solara Limited disclaims all liability for any loss or
damage of whatsoever kind (whether foreseeable or
not) which may arise from any person acting or
relying on any information or opinion relating to
Solara Limited or the SOLARA platform contained in
this White Paper or any information which is made
available in connection with any further enquiries,
notwithstanding any negligence, default or lack of
care.

2
Table of Contents

Important Notices .................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................................... 3

1. Solara: Snapshot ............................................................................................................................................................ 4

2. Market Conditions ......................................................................................................................................................... 6

2.1 The Rise of Solar ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
2.2 Blockchain and the Energy Sector (and its issues) ........................................................................................................................... 8

3. Solara Vision ................................................................................................................................................................... 9

3.1 A Distributed Root of Trust ..................................................................................................................................................................... 9
3.2 Enabling Asset Owners and Project Managers ............................................................................................................................... 10
3.3 Rich Datasets and New Markets .......................................................................................................................................................... 12
3.4 ARA: Energy Generative Blockchain Fuel .......................................................................................................................................... 13

4. SOLARA Technology Stack ......................................................................................................................................... 14

4.1 SHMs ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 14
4.2 SOLARA Edge Gateway .......................................................................................................................................................................... 14
4.3 Proof of Installation.................................................................................................................................................................................. 15
4.4 Proof of Existence ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
4.5 Proof of Fusion .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 16
4.6 SOLARA Constellation Fabric ................................................................................................................................................................ 17

5. Token Economy............................................................................................................................................................. 19
5.1 SOLARA Token (SOL) .............................................................................................................................................................................. 19
5.2 SOLARA Asset Registration .................................................................................................................................................................. 20
5.3 Project Asset Tokens............................................................................................................................................................................... 20
5.5 Data Access Reward ................................................................................................................................................................................ 21
5.6 Roadmap .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 22

6. Team & Partnerships................................................................................................................................................... 23

6.1 Core Team ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 23
6.2 Additional Team....................................................................................................................................................................................... 24
6.3 Energy Blockchain Advisor ................................................................................................................................................................... 25
6.4 Key Advisors .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 25
6.5 Partners........................................................................................................................................................................................................27

3
1. Solara: Snapshot

The clean energy economy is booming globally. Leading the decarbonisation charge is solar. Solar
photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery storage technology are improving rapidly in both efficiency and cost of
production. This is expediting a global solar powered energy transformation.

Part of the growing green economy is the global network of carbon trading and clean energy schemes that
support the production of clean energy such as solar. However, energy consumers and traders presently have
difficulties distinguishing between green (renewable) energy vs brown (fossil fuel) energy.

SOLARA’s blockchain platform plans to:

 Create a trustless energy provenance record on the blockchain

 Improves industry participant confidence in green energy infrastructure projects through the
combination of strong cryptographic proofs and the use of SOLARA Hardware Modules (SHMs).
 Allows solar asset owners to potentially monetise their energy data
 Automates creation and transfer of energy creation that has been impossible/inaccurate at small scale
 Maintains individual privacy through the use of zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs).
 Enables scalable rich energy trading data, previously inaccessible to consumers and industry.
At scale, the SOLARA platform has the potential to become the Bloomberg or Reuters of energy data, and
effectively audit the global energy production, trading and use markets through the SOLARA blockchain.

SOLARA SNAPSHOT

Solar Energy Blockchain

• Decarbonisation of global economy • Ability to create auditable proof of
• Rapidly falling cost of PV energy creation
• Energy consumers and traders • Other public blockchains are highly
cannot easily distinguish between energy intensive
solar and brown energy

SOLARA PLATFORM
• Solara blockchain creates trustless energy provenance record
• Auditable, transparent data
• Enables scaleable, rich energy trading data previously
inaccessible to consumers and industry
• Ability to build better energy applications drawing on an
increasingly rich dataset
• Power-neutral transactions on the blockchain

SHM (Solara Hardware Module): SOL ARA

Records energy creation privately Utility token used for platform Power-neutral Blockchain fuel
with zero-knowledge proofs interactions (Solara ‘gas’)

4
This enables a novel and trustworthy basis upon which to build better energy applications such as new solar
project financing models, secondary data markets, and peer-to-peer energy trading, all drawing on an
increasingly rich dataset.

To achieve scale, this ecosystem requires significant deployment of hardware modules to generate data. To
expedite this, SOLARA is offering SOL tokens in a Token Singularity Event scheduled for Q4 2017. SOL will:

 Enable the registration of SOLARA-enabled energy assets on to the SOLARA platform at the time of
provisioning.
 This payment will enter the SOLARA pool to fund future generations of hardware modules as well as
further research and development (R&D) activities.
 These R&D activities will include using the witnessed proofs produced by the SHMs at the point of
energy generation to eventually enable an energy generative blockchain fuel, ARA.
This will be one of the first cases of a blockchain fuel that incentivises the production of green, renewable
energy unlike existing Proof-of-Work methods.

5
2. Market Conditions

2.1 The Rise of Solar

The size of the global solar energy market is estimated to be over US$65 billion (2016), and could exceed
US$140 billion within five years. 1

New installations in 2016, totalling more than 75 GW (enough capacity to power the Australian National
Electricity Market nearly twice over), took global solar PV power generating capacity beyond 300 GW by year’s
end, a 33.2% increase compared to the end of 2015. The evidence suggests that this trend is set to continue with
a projected cumulative forecast of 572.9 GW of demand between 2017 and 2022.

The largest growth in 2016 was recorded in China (34.5 GW) and the US (14.7 GW), together accounting for two-
thirds of the increase in global solar capacity.

TOTAL SOLAR GENERATION CAPACITY 2

Germany: Japan:
41.3 GW 42.8 GW

US: China:
40.3 GW 78.1 GW

Global:
300 GW

In addition, the levelised cost of commercial scale solar PV power generation has dropped as low as $29-32 per
megawatt hour. 3,4,5 Such costs are now significantly less than new coal-fired power generation, which is
approximately $60/MWh without Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) 6.

1
Pyper, J., “Global Solar Market to Hit 85GW in 2017 - Double the Amount Installed in 2014”, 2017,
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/global-solar-market-forecast-to-hit-85gw-in-2017-with-surge-in-china
2
BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2017, http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2017/bp-
statistical-review-of-world-energy-2017-renewable-energy.pdf, page 5.
3 Bloomberg, “Company that offered cheapest solar sees price falling more”, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/company-
that-offered-cheapest-solar-sees-prices-falling-more
4 Diapola, A., “Cheapest Solar on Record Offered as Abu Dhabi Expands Renewables”, Bloomberg, 2016,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-19/cheapest-solar-on-record-said-to-be-offered-for-abu-dhabi
5 Mahapatra, S., “New Low Price Solar Record set in Chile”, Clean Technica, 2016, https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/18/new-low-solar-price-
record-set-chile-2-91%C2%A2-per-kwh/
6 Vorrath, S., “”Clean Coal” most expensive new power supply, says BNEF (and not all that clean)”, 2017, http://reneweconomy.com.au/clean-
coal-most-expensive-new-power-supply-says-bnef-and-not-all-that-clean-74531/
6
KEY SOLAR STATISTICS

US$140B 75GW 572.9 GW 50%

Cheaper than
Global solar New solar Solar generation
fossil fuel
energy market installation in demand
energy
(Est 2022) (2016) (Est 2022)
production

According to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance New Energy Outlook:

“Solar is already at least as cheap as coal in Germany, Australia, the

U.S., Spain and Italy. The levelized cost of electricity from solar is set to
drop another 66% by 2040. By 2021, it will be cheaper than coal in
China, India, Mexico, the U.K. and Brazil as well.” 7

Falling module cost per $/w Global PV demand

110.1
$0.53 104.6
96.4
90.4
85.4 86.0

$0.44
$/w

GW

$0.36
$0.33

H1 2016 H2 2016 H1 2017 H2 2017 2017E 2018E 2019E 2020E 2021E 2022E

Source: GTM Research, March 2017

It’s clear that solar energy adoption has strong momentum and that the global energy transition is well
underway.

As with food production in previous stages of human history, we are yet to reach energy saturation, where our
needs are met entirely by renewable energy. Once this occurs, the world will be able to engage in endeavours
previously limited by ‘cost’, often energy-bound at the core. These projects range from agricultural, to
construction and space exploration.

7 Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ”New Energy Outlook”, https://about.bnef.com/new-energy-outlook/

7
2.2 Blockchain and the Energy Sector (and its issues)
Blockchain has been touted as a game changer in the energy industry because of its ability to disintermediate
powerful, inefficient monopolies by using a trustless protocol of value exchange. 8 The potential opportunities
created by this disruption have seen a drive towards innovation in an attempt to create new value.

Several offerings have been presented in the blockchain energy industry over the last two years. These platforms
hope to integrate blockchain technology with the energy industry through a number of strategies. However,
there are a number of issues:

 Trusted interface between blockchain and real-world required: Blockchain applications that interact
with the real world need a trusted interface to verify that input data to any smart contract is an accurate
representation of real world events.
 Poor inaccurate metering: In the blockchain industry, an “oracle” plays the role of a trusted interface
with the real world 9. An oracle is an independent data stream used by smart contracts to record events
they are programmed to execute. Current approaches to energy blockchain solutions is the lack of
verifiable proof that the energy is actually ‘green’ or clean. This is primarily because the role of an oracle
has until now predominantly been fulfilled by a smart metering device at the boundary of the system.
 Low data fidelity with no energy generation provenance: Relying upon insecure information
sourced at the boundary means the fidelity of the data interface with the blockchain is open to attack.
This vulnerability is created in the system because of the centralised root of trust when energy enters
the grid at the node. There is currently no way to verifiably and cryptographically prove that energy in a
given system is actually ‘green’ in origin where the smart meter oracle is disassociated from the point of
energy generation. Proving energy provenance is therefore not assured using such current approaches.
 Opaque decision making as a consequence: The data used in most other blockchain energy
applications is low resolution therefore decisions on managing the lifecycle of individual assets are
therefore uninformed.

Energy flow and issues

Varied energy mix

Increasing number of energy sources

Wind
Energy enters grid at node
Unaudited mix of clean energy & brown
Smart meter
Self reporting energy, low transparency, Inaccurate,
Low transparency transmission losses inadequately stated Not audited

Solar

Coal

Transmission Distribution Premises use

network network

Nuclear

Further, public blockchains used in the energy sector typically rely on Proof of Work Consensus algorithms
which consume enormous amounts of energy in processing transactions that only represent a fraction of the
energy used to process them.

8
Laciau, B., “Why the energy sector must embrace blockchain now”, EY, 2017, https://betterworkingworld.ey.com/digital/blockchain-s-potential-
win-for-the-energy-sector
9
BlockchainHub, https://blockchainhub.net/blockchain-oracles/
8
3. Solara Vision

SOLARA’s vision unifies four key ideas:

Enabling solar Creating rich new Building a truly

Establishing a
project owners and data sets and a sustainable energy
distributed root of
financiers with new fidelity layer for new generative
trust
capabilities markets blockchain

3.1 A Distributed Root of Trust

The fundamental basis of SOLARA’s value proposition is built on the SOLARA Hardware Module (SHM). SHMs
are hardware security modules that combine the utility of Trusted Computing in a lightweight, smart-card key
management routine utilising blockchain technology and cryptography.

SOLARA contends that establishing a robust, distributed root of trust begins at the point of asset manufacture.
The SHMs, embedded in physical chips, are provisioned with unique cryptographic keys. These keys are signed
and certified at the point of manufacture with the SOLARA certificate. This key asset event signals to
infrastructure investors and managers that their project has reached a key milestone. The datasets can be
verified at any time with the SOLARA public key and viewed with the asset owner’s key at any time.

The physical chips hosting the SHMs are placed onto individual energy assets, such as solar panels and batteries.
The activation and orchestration of these hardware modules enables SOLARA to operate ‘up and over’ the
smart meter down to a panel scale resolution of measurement in accordance with both the Kyoto Protocol 10 and
CDM Gold Standard 11 environmental measures.

SHMs creating Distributed Root of Trust

SHM: Chips Embedded

with cryptographic key
to interact with blockchain

Distributed root of trust through SHM at point

of energy generation

10
UNFCCC, “Kyoto Protocol”, http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
11
Gold Standard, http://goldstandard.org
9
Further, these hardware modules allow SOLARA to verifiably and cryptographically prove the generation of
clean, green energy at the point of generation. This process is called ‘Proof of Fusion’ as it enables
cryptographic proof that photons (produced by nuclear fusion in the sun) have hit the substrate of the solar
panel resulting in a measured flow of electrons.

This has a number of benefits, previously unrealised:

 High data fidelity: Panel scale resolution is important because each panel differs slightly in its efficiency
and has a unique electrical signature. Many new applications and markets could be enabled by real time
rating on the quality and performance of individual pieces of solar hardware.
 Difficult to hack: Using SHMs, the system’s root of trust becomes distributed. In order to defraud the
system, a bad actor has to hack all the SHMs and external sources of verification within the block time
to hide their illegitimate behaviour.
 Fully auditable: All energy systems are inherently ‘lossy’. Despite this, by measuring exactly how much
energy is generated off each panel, accurate accounting of the energy losses throughout the system
can be performed. By measuring energy generated at the point of production, as well as measuring the
flow of energy at key points throughout the system (such as into and out of a battery and smart meter),
SOLARA is able to track the provenance of ‘green’ electrons, provided that enough SHMs are
strategically placed. This also acts as a check on the performance of the smart meter.
The marriage of secure hardware at the point of energy generation with the revolutionary capabilities of
blockchains to track the fidelity of data forms the core value proposition of the SHMs.

SOLARA’s methodology for measuring the energy and delivering the measurement value into a blockchain at
the point of production is a robust alternative and is complementary to boundary meters.

3.2 Enabling Asset Owners and Project Managers

3.2.1 Infrastructure Financier Assurance
Currently, funding for renewable energy infrastructure takes many
forms. Using the SOLARA platform, those raising funds for the
construction, maintenance and commercialisation of solar Solara Platform
infrastructure can fractionalise the ownership of the solar assets they
develop and issue Project Asset Tokens to potentially allow
stakeholders to trade these assets on third-party platforms that
manage private equity, capital and crowd-funding.

Such platforms could showcase investment opportunities and allow Issue Project Asset
fundraising progress to be tracked. Tokens to raise clean
energy project funding
In the same way as ICOs can provide a
source of funds to develop large
blockchain projects, SOLARA has the
potential to enable easier access to Fractional ownership
funding for solar projects of any scale, of project asset
from microgrids to solar farms.

Trust between those purchasing infrastructure-backed tokens and those using their funds is established and
tracked using cryptographic proofs. This includes tracking the lifecycle of the asset itself in real time from the
very instant it is switched on. This Proof of Installation and Existence, detailed in Section 4, is in turn
connected to independently verifiable cryptographic proof of appropriate usage of the asset and the resulting
metered green energy output and revenue measured using the SHMs.
10
Importantly, the infrastructure financier can potentially enable trading of the infrastructure tokens between
contributors, including a transfer of the rights to the revenue generated by those assets throughout their
lifecycle, from the moment they are paid for, entirely on the blockchain.

In this way, the buyer of the production rights to these assets can be sure that such assets exist and are
producing green power with a known efficiency. SHMs therefore have the potential to provide certainty and
assurance to infrastructure financiers where previously none may have existed.

3.2.2 Fractionalised Ownership

The SHMs could also allow renewable energy projects to apportion and fractionalise ownership of arrays of solar
panels, batteries and other key infrastructure components through robust asset-level cryptography. This process
of asset fractionalisation could help to lower the barriers to entry for those wishing to participate in the
renewable energy revolution.

Individual panels, and even fractions of panels, could be bought and traded through project providers, no
matter where in the world they are located. SOLARA will be among the world’s first distributed platforms
enabling decentralised and provable ownership of solar assets.

Prototype user interface sample for project administrators with SOLARA lifecycle events

11
3.3 Rich Datasets and New Markets
The energy industry does not currently enjoy rich data on production or consumption characteristics. Using the
SOLARA platform, new rich datasets will become available allowing deeper insights into current markets and
even the creation of new ones.

Potential Dataset Potential Market Usage

Total and individual capacity for supply at different nodes in Frequency Control and Ancillary Services (FCAS). Decision
the system including generation sources (panels), and making inputs for purchasing of capacity for FCAS, or
storage (batteries), including localised usage versus storage hedging markets.

Storage capacity characteristics, including load ramp FCAS. Load ramp up may be used to provide stability for a
up/down and discharge. phase where excess PV is present. Discharge could be used
to provide services for Regulation or Contingency FCAS
markets.

Variable power-yields - e.g. on a macro-scale the ageing of Asset Ranking. Could be used for long-term ranking of PV
solar infrastructure or on a micro-scale the passing of production assets. Could be used when pricing investment in
clouds/weather particular PV generation assets (solar farms).

Current detailed usage of electricity from appliances/IOT,
through to households, through to localised infrastructure
(microgrids, communities and solar farms)
Potential Market Insights for providers of:
 IoT appliances
 Energy contracts (retailers)
 Energy trading/optimisation services (bots).
 Distributors (detailed breakdown of grid and
microgrid performance and capacity).

Latent capacity for consumption. E.g. the ability to absorb Energy market contracts. Forward selling of capacity could
extra energy for production of goods from a factory, or how be used to guarantee demand during low-demand periods
much a storage unit (battery) could absorb. and also to potentially provide grid stability by increasing
load when excess PV generation is present on a phase.

Demand for energy at fine-grained price levels, through the Possible inputs for spot, futures and hedging markets.
order book (bids/asks)

Long-term output, performance and yield of key Possible hardware performance rating market: Allows
infrastructure assets over its entire lifetime. This also makes market verification of manufacturer claims E.g. long term
pricing and trading of assets more difficult and less liquid. performance of solar panels.

Trading Benchmarking Pricing Green Credits Insights

Proof of Fusion has the potential to also enable the creation of new markets. Each SOLARA-enabled asset,
including individual solar panels and batteries, would be capable of posting a price to sell its output. This could
potentially open a market for energy buy, sell, and store microtransactions. Such plans could benefit both
consumer and retailer, for example, by purchasing energy from a solar farm well correlated with residential
consumer load, offering a lower tariff while making a greater profit - a win-win outcome.

12
3.4 ARA: Energy Generative Blockchain Fuel
In the future, SOLARA aims to allow use of the witness proofs produced
by the SHMs at the point of energy generation to enable an energy
generative blockchain fuel, ARA. ARA
This has a number of benefits:

 Proof of Fusion: Publishing witnessed proof of energy

generation would earn the witness (the owner of the asset) ARA.
Recording Proof of Fusion drives the data generation on the
SOLARA blockchain Used as fees for miners
 Greening the Blockchain: These proofs of green energy for witnessed proof of
generation could then be used as fees for miners and to energy generation
provide stake in a multitude of blockchains and consensus
algorithms, converting traditional chains to green chains.
 Incentivises renewable energy usage: Instead of using Proof
of Work, the distribution of coins would be proportionate to
Proof of Fusion of verifiable green energy production. In this Creates a green
way, a blockchain implementing ARA as a fuel could be the first blockchain
blockchain that incentivises the production of renewable energy
as opposed to traditional Proof of Work models that incentivise
the consumption of energy.
Blockchain technology is rapidly evolving. The Ethereum public chain, as well as some private consortium chains,
aim to eventually implement pluggable consensus algorithms and pluggable “fuels” (gas) for transaction
execution and usage of the blockchain. Such technology currently exists on private chains and in test networks,
and is on the roadmap for public chains such as Ethereum. The availability of such technology opens up the
possibility of using ‘green’ renewable gas for storage, processing and consensus. This could enable a blockchain
ecosystem to run entirely on Proof of Fusion whilst maintaining interoperability and consistency with a growing
ecosystem of tokenized instruments and services.

13
4. SOLARA Technology Stack

The SOLARA ecosystem seeks to form a decentralized,

fibrous network of:
SOLARA Technology Stack

 Solar telemetry sensors at the edge,

 Blockchain certified and witnessed metering data SHMs
at key nodal ‘branches’,
 Oracles for onboarding real world market
SOLARA Edge Gateway
conditions, and
 Non-SOLARA inputs into smart contract logic, for
example from the traditional power grid. Proof of Installation

4.1 SHMs
The purpose of the SHMs is to establish a distributed root Proof of Existence
of trust through a robust, cryptographically verifiable chain
of truth beginning at the point of energy generation and
tracking the flow of those ‘green’ electrons until use. Proof of Fusion

SHMs can be incorporated into most energy assets including solar PV panels, power optimisers, inverters,
batteries, and meters. SHMs can be integrated with individual energy assets either directly at the time of
manufacture or through later pairing of SHMs with assets. The private key for the SHM enclave is provisioned at
the factory. The public key is then signed by the SOLARA Certificate Authority.

Together, SOLARA’s SHMs and blockchain technology provide assets and smart contracts with tamper-resistant,
high quality data that can be traded on with confidence. The business case required by infrastructure investors
for the financing of network topology components (such as new transmission endpoints or storage facilities)
could be eased by this layer of high quality asset and energy performance data.

4.2 SOLARA Edge Gateway

In each installation there may be a number of SOLARA enabled solar panels, optimisers or inverters, and
batteries. The SOLARA Edge Gateway coordinates the behaviour of each of these SOLARA modules.

SHMs are low-power and low-cost devices with minimal

computing power. The SOLARA Edge Gateway provides
the nodal intelligence and computing power to
aggregate signed telemetry sensor proofs, facts about
the current deployment, and production of the
infrastructure.

The SOLARA Edge Gateway acts as a secure collection

point and aggregator for various energy supply,
distribution, storage and consumption components. This
includes panel, optimiser, inverter and battery data. It
absorbs signatures from the SHMs and provides witness
to the broader SOLARA Constellation Fabric and is the
point from which decisions about what to do with the
energy generated are made such as store, use, or sell.

SOLARA Edge Gateways aggregate mesh network telemetry and coordinate via backhaul for public-facing
proofs.
14
4.3 Proof of Installation
Asset registration begins with Proof of Installation (POI). POI is required in order to prove, cryptographically,
that the asset was physically installed at the intended location.

POI is established through a bonding event, a cryptographic ‘handshake’ that is registered into the blockchain at
the time of installation and subsequent stages of the asset’s lifecycle.

Trust is established from the very beginning of the asset’s lifecycle at the point of installation. This innovation
helps to prevent both fraud 12 and market manipulation 13,14,15 that has the potential to erode infrastructure
investor confidence in projects of this nature.

POI for individual components, such as solar PV panels, is combined with POI of aggregate components, such as
the inverters and meters used in a project. This provides an increasingly difficult attack surface for adversaries
who might otherwise fake the provisioning of infrastructure.

The bonding event is communicated over standard communications for solar infrastructure via RS485 (Modbus),
Zigbee mesh or any Smart Energy Profile (SEP 2.0) 16 method that is deployable.

4.4 Proof of Existence

Each component in an energy network has unique characteristics. The defining characteristics of each
infrastructure component, such as battery storage curve characteristics, provide a unique electrical signature
that is processed, signed and aggregated for easy verification.

The process of signal processing and signing is called Proof of Existence (POE). POE creates a ‘heartbeat’ for
each individual panel that can be compared to other panels under similar conditions. This allows any
irregularities to be easily highlighted, both for the purposes of analytics and fraud detection.

The MPPT curve is indicative of how the POE ‘heartbeat” could be represented

12
A-Power Energy Generation Systems, LTD Securities Litigation website
http://classaction.kccllc.net/CaseInfo.aspx?pas=APowerSecuritiesLitigation
13
Borger, J., “Tapes reveal Enron’s secret role in California’s power blackouts”, The Guardian, 2005,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/feb/05/enron.usnews
14
Wingfield, B., “JPMorgan Accused of Gaming Energy Bids as FERC Deal Looms”, Bloomberg, 2013,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-29/jpmorgan-accused-of-manipulating-energy-markets-in-u-s-
15
Kary, T., Eckhouse, B., “SunEdison Sets Bankruptcy Exit With Nothing For Shareholders”, Bloomberg, 2017,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/sunedison-sets-bankruptcy-exit-with-nothing-for-shareholders
16
Smart Energy Profile (SEP) 2.0 Uncovered - EE Times
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279156
15
As such, a bad actor wishing to fraudulently provision infrastructure would need to compromise the security of
the individual SHMs and simulate both their unique characteristics and changes in their efficiency lifecycle
simultaneously with all other SHMs within the same production facility and beyond.

As the number of infrastructure components with installed SHMs scales, this attack becomes increasingly
unlikely to be orchestrated. Importantly, even if the SHMs were to be compromised, the attack would itself cost
more than the potential reward.

Example applications for POI and POE can be seen in the table below.

Example applications for POI & POE

Application Challenge SOLARA’s Solution

Auditing for PV Development agencies face auditing Project owner grants data access permissions via smart
project funding challenges: contracts to development fund administrators.

 Funding transparency
SOLARA’s POI and POE could provide project data to
 Impact measurement give confidence to the project stakeholders.

Carbon Accounting Certifiers are tasked with ensuring Costly and lengthy accreditation procedures can be
projects produce real, quantifiable replaced.
GHG reductions.

This currently requires prolonged, POI and POE data access permissions could be granted

costly monitoring, reporting and to certifiers by project owners producing better

verification activities. outcomes.

Solar Project How can a solar project developer Project developers could potentially use the SOLARA
Crowdfunding elegantly apportion asset ownership platform to fractionalise physical assets and assign
across a virtual solar panel? ownership tokens and yields derived from solar
production.

4.5 Proof of Fusion

SHMs sign metadata on the electrical characteristics and yield of green energy assets, from panels to group
aggregators and inverters. Proof of Fusion adds detail on the performance of the asset over and above that
provided by Proof of Existence.

Proof of Fusion creates a cryptographic signature of the output of the panel at the point of production and at
the time of production, and feeds it directly and securely into the local SOLARA Edge Blockchain, which
mitigates the possibility of fraud or malfeasance.

In this fashion, the quality of a solar asset portfolio is quantifiable. Green infrastructure projects can construct
their solar asset portfolio however they decide but, unlike conventional analog valuation systems, there would
be a technical rating for quality assurance. The asset grade assigned can be digitally and forensically verified.

16
4.6 SOLARA Constellation Fabric
The SOLARA Constellation Fabric is the blockchain architecture for the SOLARA ecosystem. It consists of two
layers, the local SOLARA Edge Blockchain and the public SOLARA Main Chain.

Infrastructure owners and financiers deploy SHM modules with assets and SOLARA Edge Gateway nodes, which
act as both mesh network aggregators for localized mesh networks, and provide a scalable local SOLARA Edge
Blockchain.

SOLARA Edge Gateways retain detailed data from sensors within their Edge Blockchain network with added
fraud resistance from the SHMs whose proofs are propagated to the SOLARA Main Chain, whilst shielding key
private metrics.

Solara Constellation Fabric

SHM SHM SHM SHM SHM

Edge Node Edge Node Edge Node Edge Node

SOLARA Edge Blockchain

Detailed data propagated to the main chain

SOLARA Main Blockchain

When producing rich data and proofs of performance, the witnessed data can be provided alongside the result
of the Merkle-ised computation. This consists of both the zero-knowledge contract itself and the results of
MapReduce aggregation functions.

Data analytics are performed on the zero-knowledge assertions, shielding the data (such as an individual’s
energy usage statistics) from propagation to the broader network. This is MapReduce but with fraud proofs
traceable to the origin of the data.

An analytics provider or blockchain oracle may originate a business around this data, for instance, one may
create a merkle tree of chains operating a reduce function to generate aggregate facts about the dataset
without compromising individual privacy, for example that one in 30 people were charging their electric vehicle
at a given time, but not specifically who was home. If a reduce function on summation can be produced then an
average can also be produced.

SOLARA Edge Blockchain networks and the SOLARA Main Chain create the obligation of processing through
periodic witnessing and proofs. External proofs such as block hashes from the Bitcoin and Ethereum mainnet
chains, as well as GPS time jitter measurements further strengthen the Byzantine Fault Tolerance properties of
the network, even in the case of total network partition or obstruction of communication with the SOLARA Main
Chain.

The SOLARA Edge Blockchains must provide external proofs in order to commit to a witness record, which in
turn is broadcast to the wider SOLARA Constellation Fabric. External proof sources may include using a receive-
only setup such as the Blockstream Satellite Receiver 17 and incorporating the corresponding block hash. The
SOLARA Main Chain can enforce commitment and processing by broadcasting the witness proofs (and
Merkelized computations). This covers both Byzantine and non-Byzantine simple faults such as delays or
disruption to network backhaul to the SOLARA Main Chain and improves scalability.

17
Blockstream, “Blockstream Satellite FAQ”, https://blockstream.com/satellite
17
Example applications for PoF - Proof of Fusion

Possible Problem SOLARA’s Solution

Application

Real-time asset Fine grained, detailed and robust data metrics at The combination of POI, POE, and POF could
lifecycle an individual asset level have previously been enable any asset owner to make management
management
generally inaccessible to asset owners. decisions about the asset’s lifecycle in real time.

Peer-to-peer Using smart meters as oracles is problematic.
energy trading Tracking the provenance of ‘green’ electrons has
never before been possible to this extent.
POF provides a robust hardware oracle that
enables the direct trading of energy peer-to-
peer, where regulations permit. In regulated
markets, this is often limited to embedded
networks.

Carbon Credits Carbon credits are often derived from inaccurate
measurement processes that can be difficult to
verify.
POF allows the creation of high fidelity green
certificates (carbon credits). Accurate and
verifiable carbon credits could be minted and
distributed in real time and form part of the
economic value proposition for project
financiers.

Proof of Work Proof of Work consumes vast amount of energy SOLARA network participants can receive freshly
(POW) resources, often from unsustainable resources. minted green energy credits through ARA Chain
Replacement
in direct proportion to the amount of provable
green energy they are producing. This may
function as a green cryptocurrency in future to
replace PoW consensus.

Data Mining Previously, granular production data with high SHMs produce a vast long-tail of energy data
and Analytics fidelity has not been readily available. for potential analytics and data-mining
applications.

Wider Market Some energy trading decisions are not available Consumers can determine the amount of green
Participation without a verifiable green signal against which energy they are consuming and adjust both
trading decisions can be made. consumption and production (as a ‘prosumer’).

Decentralized exchanges and smart contracts

could participate in the energy markets, with
access to both richer SOLARA data and
”oraclized” traditional grid metrics.

Traders, algorithmic intelligence, and the wider

network could leverage both micro- and macro-
level metrics on energy for better trading
decisions.

IOT Detailed Internet of Things (IOT) energy IOT and energy infrastructure components
Optimisation signalling and monitoring has previously not receive and produce detailed signalling to
been readily available. optimise usage of assets and returns/yields

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5. Token Economy

5.1 SOLARA Token (SOL)

The SOLARA token ecosystem utilises a single token, the SOLARA Token (SOL).

SOL will be based on the ERC20/EIP20 token standard and offered in our Token Singularity Event with a fixed
supply of 100,000,000 tokens. The supply will never increase.

The SOLARA Token will be a platform access or utility token. Its uses will include:

 Paying for SHM registration onto the network

 Enabling interaction with participants on the SOLARA platform
 Providing strong cryptographic proofs, verifying and asserting real-economy facts,
 Getting access to both raw data and mining analytics derived from that data.
SOLARA Tokens will not represent renewable energy assets such as panels, batteries or transmission lines. We
envisage that SOLARA Tokens will, however, be used by the investors, owners, traders, and regulators of
renewable infrastructure to:

Prove the creation and ownership of renewable assets

Assert the current state, history, and provenance of an asset throughout its entire
lifecycle, including real-world changes to its physical deployment, environment
(temperature, weather, position) and efficiency (return)

Provide attestable rich data metrics to determine the return on investment,

performance, and efficiency of the assets in real time

Provide renewable energy asset owners with a powerful lense to inspect and data-
mine their facility’s performance and management thereby creating trust between
infrastructure investors and managers of assets

In exchange for the publishing of witness proofs of metrics (aggregate data facts about key energy metrics),
data brokers will receive SOL tokens (or fractions of tokens) on the public Ethereum blockchain.

The SOLARA data ecosystem itself will always receive the de-personalized data and delay its propagation by an
interval equal to the lowest bidding interval for onward processing in analytics and storage platforms, including
in the raw SOLARA data archive.

SOL tokens will be required to execute any price discovery mechanisms for fresh, live data as they will act as the
fuel for this logic.

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5.2 SOLARA Asset Registration
Whenever an SHM is registered onto the SOLARA platform through the Proof of Installation bonding event, SOL
will be required to be paid by the party aiming to register the asset to gain access to the SOLARA platform’s
features and benefits. The assets will subsequently be registered as active in the SOLARA Asset Registry.

The SHM Registration Fee will be placed into an escrowed pool of SOL tokens. A portion of the fee will be
allocated to fund the next generation of SHM development. In this way, the SOLARA ecosystem is intended to
be self-funding. Every asset registered on to the platform will contribute towards its improvement. The SHM
Registration Fee is linked to a function that steps down over time and approaches nil over a period of 25 years.
This curve mimics the licensing cycle of registered intellectual property rights.

The first solar assets to be registered will be PV panels and batteries. Initially it will take a fixed amount of SOL to
register an energy asset (and the use of one SHM). The registration fee will reduce (in SOL) as a function of time,
towards being suitable for utility scale solar.

Project Assets and transfer logic are still within control of the project administrators.

5.3 Project Asset Tokens

Access to the SOLARA Asset Registry (SAR) is granted per bonding event
by paying the SHM Registration Fee. The infrastructure owner (project SHM
manager) must hold the required amount of SOL either in escrow or in a Registration
smart contract.

Once an SHM has been registered, the project manager can facilitate the
distribution of their own project-specific Project Asset Tokens corresponding
to the assets of that project. These Project Asset Tokens must be created in
SOLARA Asset
accordance with the SOLARA Project Asset Token Standard (PATS). Registry (SAR)
For clarity, the Project Asset Token is specific to the kind of asset that has
been registered. SOLARA is not the provider or controller of these tokens.
Rather, the infrastructure project issues these tokens according to their
Project Asset
specific requirements for that project. They utilize the SOLARA platform to
provide strong assertions about the condition of the project, its assets and Token Issue
returns.
20
The project initiator may choose to issue ERC20/EIP20 tokens representing fractionalized ownership in their
project. This would allow the project operator to enable a secondary market for financing, transfer and growth.

The Project Asset Token smart contract will dictate the bounds and preferences of the owner of the Project
Asset Token. These smart contracts, specific to the needs and requirements of the project in question will be
derived from a common smart contract standard, the PATS, which project asset tokens implement and use. This
ensures cross-compatibility and frictionless trading of Project Asset Tokens within the SOLARA ecosystem.

The holder of the Project Asset Token will be able to adjust preferences within the Project Asset Token smart
contract. This may include appointing a data access privilege broker (contract logic, or person), as well as the
allocation of the right to the offtake and yield of the asset.

Project-specific Project Asset Tokens are separate from, and not to be confused with, SOLARA Tokens (SOL).
Crowdfunding, investment and private equity systems may create their own non-interchangeable PATs using the
SOLARA platform in order to raise funds for a solar project.

Such platforms for the raising of capital in various forms (tokens, debt, equity) are growing rapidly, and SOLARA
enables an additional layer of trustless assurance. Those that use an SHM have greater transparency,
provenance and revenue streams from data and analytics, but the business model for the project is entirely their
own. This allows project initiators maximum flexibility and control over the business logic, governance and
rewards for their project, whilst enhancing the trustless nature and green provenance of production.

5.5 Data Access Reward

The Project Asset Token will specify who receives the yield from the asset in the form of energy and rich data.
Third-parties may also be able to query SOLARA and retrieve analytics from third-parties and/or oracles.

The Project Asset Token holder may receive SOL tokens for the most recent data using a dynamic
pricing/bidding model. Bidders, smart contracts which act as the conduit and delegate to both on-chain and
off-chain actors and businesses, will be able to interact with a smart contract to register their interest in a
project’s offer of data and will be required to deposit a quantity of SOL in order to place that bid.

The SOLARA ecosystem itself will always receive the data and delays its propagation by an interval equal to the
lowest bidding interval (round) for onward processing in analytics and storage platforms, including in the raw
SOLARA data archive - to facilitate a long-tail of high quality, comprehensive data. Note that this data is the de-
personalized proofs.

SOLAR SOL Token Circular Ecosystem

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5.6 Roadmap
We are mapping a path across the nodes of the Ara constellation 18 starting with ALPHA - our Token Singularity
Event.

Following the Token Singularity Event, the SOLARA team will seek to complete the development of the SOLARA
platform in a build, install & operate sequence as follows: BETA - DELTA - GAMMA

18
Ara (constellation), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ara_(constellation)

22
6. Team & Partnerships

6.1 Core Team

Klaus spent many years as an accountant in public practice and has been a senior
executive and consultant in the financial services industry for over 30 years. He has
delivered complex projects across several countries and acted as direct advisor to a
number of banks and financial institutions. Klaus is an outcome-focused strategist
working mainly in the field of private equity investment.

He believes that any business problem can be solved with a combination of robust
thinking, discussion and action. Unlike many big picture thinkers, Klaus has a reputation

Klaus Selinger for implementation and delivery of optimal outcomes.

Chairman

Uli was the Managing Director of Giesecke+Devrient Australasia. Uli has a Dipl. Ing (FH)
degree in Applied Physics. He has worked at the forefront of new technologies for the
last 30 years, with expertise in real time data processing and related security
mechanisms (symmetric/asymmetric). Understanding relevant business drivers
enabled him to run a profitable company with mass deployments in the smart card
industry. His strategic and visionary approach led to a secure, distributed
authentication system for one of the largest manufacturers of gaming systems in the
Uli Klink world – more than ten years after launch, it is still considered state of the art.

Uli is a respected and acknowledged SIM expert and consults to this industry in his
spare time.

LG Vandenberg is a technology and wireless executive maven who is into Bitcoin,

blockchains, and bio-genomics. LG graduated B.A.Sc. in Systems Engineering,
University of Waterloo, Canada. He has evolved his green and cleantech skills via a
base of defense technologies & security learning curve. From systems design
principles and critical thinking, he enjoys tangling conceptual adventures into thought
leadership and live projects.

Leon-Gerard Vandenberg Leon enjoys driving change and convergence using various disruptive fashion.
CTO & Platform Today this means permissionless and exponential technologies, sensor networks,
Evangelist breakthrough identity and industry security models all inside chips, SIM cards and
new IoT devices alongside cloud services, AI and big data.

Joe is a technology strategist and leader, focussing on blockchain technology,

heuristics/AI and algorithmic trading. Joe has 20 years experience ranging from large-
scale enterprise architecture and planning through to rapid prototyping in startup
environments and specialist teams. Joe is a passionate futurist, with interests ranging
from genetics and neural interface systems, to space exploration.

Joseph Richards

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 Andrew is a Financial Markets Executive whose extensive experience spans a range
of roles including domestic and offshore financial institutions. As a dealer with over
15 years marketing structured derivatives, he gained extensive experience providing
advice and risk management solutions to most of the ASX top 200 listed companies,
specialising in structured interest rate and currency derivatives before embarking on a
career as a Corporate Advisor.
Andrew Bald Since 1999, Andrew has originated and completed numerous corporate finance
transactions, assisting companies manage both their debt and equity requirements.
Andrew specialises in:
• providing strategic planning, risk management and financing advice;
• raising capital and advising companies in relation to listings (IPO);
• identifying profitable and successful transactions; and
• creating, structuring and fostering new businesses.

Denis has more than 20 years of experience in construction of power plants,

Denis Bednyagin
Advisor, International
Business Development
investment management, consulting, and scientific research focused on energy
systems and advanced energy technologies. Having an in-depth knowledge in
engineering and economics, he was acting as an advisor to startups, medium size
engineering & IT firms, large international utility companies, investment funds, and
governmental organisations providing expertise on project & corporate financing,
technology assessment, portfolio valuation, business strategy, M&A deals, and
company setup. Denis holds postgraduate Master’s degree in energy and PhD in
economics of innovation in energy sector from the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology – Lausanne (EPFL)

Matt is a blockchain entrepreneur and a passionate advocate for climate change

action and sustainability. He graduated from UNSW in 2015 with a bachelor of
Advanced Science/Arts with Honours in climate science. Matt was a UNSW
representative at the UN climate change conference COP21 in Paris. Since
graduating, Matt spent a month in the slums of Kolkata, India addressing issues of
energy poverty and has worked on a number of startups in the energy sector.
Matthew Hale

Naviin Kapoor, is a blockchain consultant and a business transformation leader

with more than eleven and half years of experience in project management and
business analysis and more than one year of experience in ethereum, bitcoin,
hyperledger, EOS, consensus protocol and distributed/shared ledger technology.

Naviin Kapoor

6.2 Additional Team

Graham Gallagher

Callan Sarre

Hanlin Day
Richard Barker Casey Lim Alex Baigent Kaila Hart

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6.3 Energy Blockchain Advisor
Erwin Smole - Austria - EU
Strategy & Business
Development - Grid Singularity
6.4 Key Advisors
Dr. Karel Nolles
MD - Aton Consulting -
Australia
Robert K. Allen - Consultant -
Australia
Erwin Smole is the Grid Singularity co-founder responsible for sales. Boasting
over two decades of experience in the energy sector, Erwin held senior
management positions in utilities, regulatory authority E-Control, and PwC. He
has further been engaged in strategic business advisory for government and
international organizations (UNDP, EU), as well as a range of energy market
entrepreneurs.
Erwin is a recognized expert in development of new business cases in the both
regulated and non-regulated energy market segments. He holds a MSc in
Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Graz, Austria and an
MBA from the California Lutheran University, USA. He is Associate Professor at
the University of Applied Science in Carinthia, Austria
Dr Karel Nolles was engaged as an advisor to the business in July and August 2017.
Karel was a founding director of the UNSW centre for Energy and Environmental
Markets. Karel worked as an investment banker with Macquarie Group, in the Utilities
and Climate Change team of Macquarie Capital, and later in Macquarie Global
Investments. In 2013, Karel consulted to Australian Energy Markets Commission
(AEMC) regarding the application of the G20 derivatives principles to the Australian
energy markets.
In 2014-2016 Karel was retained as Head of Market Design for SocietyOne, one of
Australia's leading FinTech companies, where he led the team to designing and
implementing the SocietyOne market place, including developing robotic/AI investor
bidding agents and systems for real time market surveillance, operational monitoring,
data simulation and analytics, and applying machine learning techniques.
Rob is an accomplished leader, engineer and consultant with 30 years experience in
the banking, IT, engineering and military sectors. Rob has significant experience of
enterprise-wide strategic planning leading to fundamental organisational change and
leading the delivery of major programmes. Over the last decade, he has specialised
in the delivery of payments programmes in the Banking sector. He is the co-founder
of PwC’s Vulcan Digital Assets Services business.
VulcanDAS was developed by PwC’s fintech practice and is now being spun-out
of PwC as a separate entity in Q1 2018 under its existing management team.
Expertise:
 Financial Services with emphasis on Payments and transaction banking
(Faster Payments, SWIFT, SEPA, Payments Services Directive, Bacs,
CHAPS, SIC)
 Blockchain and Distributed Ledger SME
 Enterprise-wide strategic planning
 Delivery of large, strategic change programmes
25
 Dr. Delton B. Chen is an Australian civil engineer who holds a Ph.D. from the
University of Queensland. Dr. Chen is a co-founder and lead author of the ‘Global
4C Risk Mitigation’ policy (global4c.org), which is an international policy for
central banks to provide long-term climate finance and macro-prudential
governance of systemic risks. The policy aims to introduce a parallel currency,
called Complementary Currencies for Climate Change (4C), and to price climate
risks in foreign exchange currency markets.
Dr. Delton B. Chen
Dr. Chen is expert in the modelling of dynamic physical systems, including water
Climate Change Mitigation
and groundwater flow, geothermal energy and greenhouse gas mitigation. Dr.
Chen is a research fellow with Project Drawdown (drawdown.org) and writes on
various topics, including climate policy, blockchains, and currencies.

Peter a private investor and entrepreneur with investments in technology, the

Internet, media and entertainment, sports and service companies primarily in the
United States, The People’s Republic of China, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

Previously, Mr Hsu was a managing director with Lehman Brothers, Inc., an

executive director of Lehman Bros (Asia), Inc., Shearson Lehman Brothers (Asia),
Inc. and Shearson Lehman Brothers Finance (H.K.) Ltd
Peter Hsu - Global Trust (HK)
Director - Solara Ltd (HK)

Geoff is an entrepreneurial sales, business and channel development executive

with over twenty-five years of experience building high performance teams and
driving business growth around emerging markets and technology. He has
successfully delivered national (Canada & US) and international projects for
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and several early stage ventures.

Geoffrey Cairns
Consultant - USA

Zac Rogers is a PhD candidate in the College of Business, Government, and Law at
Flinders University of South Australia and Flinders Blockchain Alliance. Current
research undertaken in partnership with DST Group explores the strategic
implications of rapid technological advances including distributed ledger
technologies, automation, and AI on the ADF’s future operating environment.

Zac’s other research includes assessing and anticipating broad impacts of

Zac Rogers decentralised resource allocation infrastructures represented by distributed ledger
PhD Candidate, Flinders technologies on incumbent centralised systems and the implications for
Blockchain Alliance institutional power and trust.

26
6.5 Partners

360Utilities has matured from a competitive PV and energy storage

wholesaler to an integrated solar and energy storage retailer providing
residential, commercial, embedded network and utility scale solutions. The
company installed some of the first Tesla Powerwall (1& 2) in the world and
is focused on delivering quality products from companies such as
LGChem, BYD, Solaredge, Victron and SMA.

The 360Utilities team have completed projects both within Australia and
internationally encompassing some 160,000 installations.

360Utilities believes in the democratisation of energy for the benefit of all

customers and will help Solara deploy its proof of concept at residential,
SME and utility scale and will have exclusive rights to an over the air
(OTA) lifecycle management tool for the first 12 months of commercial
deployment.

TierOne Telecommunications Inc. is the third telecommunications carrier

to launch its own network in the Philippines.

The company holds an exclusive regional concession from the Philippine

Government to provide 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE and broadband wireless
internet services within the state of Mindanao (population approximately
5 million).

Following the successful roll out of its network within that region, Tier1
will seek to expand its services across the Philippines (population
approximately 110 million) more broadly.

TierOne has adopted the SOLARA platform to facilitate the

implementation of its network infrastructure in the region including their
data centre, franchise partners and remote villages in over 7100 islands.

hiveonline takes the guesswork out of value chains and reputation

management, whether you’re a government, bank, corporation or NGO.
If you’re managing portfolios of investments, microfinance lending or
projects, we provide the solution you need to address your trust, audit
and administration challenges.

Our sustainable financial products help you to scale portfolios of

investments to hard to validate projects. Our feature phone version of
the SME app works seamlessly with investment products to build
community financial ecosystems, bypassing the need for traditional
bank records and formal ID, and helping informal economy businesses
join the formal economy, access finance, thrive and grow.

27