⚡ WattX: Decentralizing Energy, Empowering Communities ⚡

Inspiration 🌍

Over a billion people still don't have access to energy — of any kind.

The world’s energy markets are highly centralized, inefficient, and often leave marginalized communities behind. These systems are often inefficient, with transmission losses accounting for nearly 8% of the total electricity produced globally. Our inspiration for WattX was to disrupt the status quo by decentralizing energy markets through peer-to-peer trading within microgrids. With sustainability and equity in mind, WattX aims to give power to the people, literally and figuratively. 🌱💡

We want to incentivize sustainability, minimize transmission losses, and ensure energy security by enabling communities to trade energy directly, without intermediaries. This approach also pioneers energy equity by allowing underdeveloped areas to benefit from decentralized microgrids, fostering self-sustaining communities.

What It Does 🔌

WattX creates a decentralized energy trading platform within microgrids, where participants can seamlessly trade energy using autonomous agents and dynamic pricing models. By utilizing mock token transactions, users can exchange energy peer-to-peer, ensuring that those who produce excess energy (like solar) can sell it directly to others in the community.

This decentralized approach allows users to trade energy efficiently, transparently, and without the need for large centralized energy companies. 🌞🔋

How We Built It 🛠️

We combined a range of cutting-edge technologies to bring WattX to life:

We built the frontend of WattX using Next.js and TypeScript to make it fast and scalable, with React driving the interactive UI components. To create a clean and modern look, we used Material UI and Aeternity UI. One of the coolest parts of the project was integrating 3D elements from Spline for the first time, which really added a new level of interactivity to the platform. It was a challenging but rewarding experience, and we’re proud of how it turned out!

The backend of the project was built by using multiple technologies such as python,flask server, Openai and next.js. The blockchain ledger and the handling of the bank account is handled by supabase and python. The supabase keeps the account of the bank and the python uses the distributed ledger to create the blockchain Wattcoin. Then there are two autonomous fetch AI agents which are stimulating the real life situation of the negation of the energy exchange with the use of Wattcoin. Adding to that the flask server acts as the middleman between the Next.js website and the python files running the agents and the blockchain. The Next.js handles the functionality of the website and how all the things are displayed.

Challenges We Faced 🧠

Building a project of this scale in just 24 hours was no small feat! Here are some key challenges we tackled:

Agent Behavior Balancing: Making sure our autonomous agents behaved rationally in various scenarios, while ensuring fair trading.
Real-Time Pricing Sync: Ensuring accurate real-time energy pricing across different nodes in the microgrid was tricky but rewarding!
Fronted: Looking into next.js 3D elements and ensuring that the flask server smoothly communicates between the frontend and backend.
Future Blockchain Integration: We aimed to implement blockchain but focused on laying the foundation with our mock transactions for scalability in future iterations. 📊

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of 🎉

Successfully created a simulation fully functional decentralized trading platform prototype in under 24 hours! 🚀
Incorporate 2 Fetch.ai agents that communicate with one another in real time to negotiate and trade WattCoins over the ledger
Laid the groundwork for future blockchain and smart contract integration to ensure security and transparency.

What We Learned 📚

The hackathon experience taught us an incredible amount about:

Decentralized systems and how they can be applied to everyday utilities like energy trading.
Agent-based simulations and how autonomous agents can be leveraged to make complex decisions in a marketplace.
Working with flask and api keys
Dynamic pricing models, which are essential for real-time trading within decentralized systems.
The importance of scalability and future-proofing the platform, especially as we plan to integrate blockchain and IoT solutions in the next phase.

What’s Next for WattX 🚀

Our hackathon prototype is just the beginning! Here’s our roadmap:

Blockchain Integration: Moving from mock token transactions to blockchain-based transactions for increased transparency, security, and immutability. 🔗
Smart Contracts: Enabling automated, trustless energy trading agreements using smart contracts. ⚖️
IoT Integration: Allowing real-time monitoring of energy production and consumption through IoT devices. 📡
Scalability: Expanding from microgrids to larger grids and urban areas, ensuring WattX can power communities of any size. 📈
Carbon Footprint Reduction: Empowering communities to reduce their carbon footprint by incentivizing solar energy production and localized trading. 🌿