The past year has seen a steady trickle of blockchain-based experiments from utilities, embracing startups exploring the technology to see how they can use the ledger system to better embrace renewable energy sources. However, the past year also saw bitcoin suffer a crash, which will likely put many investors on edge – those who don’t really understand what’s going on. However, 2018 is shaping up to be the year in which some major progress is made on the utility blockchain front – and two deals have caught our eye this week. Kontrol Energy used the pre-CES lull to announce that it had acquired an energy analytics company for $1m – but neglected to mention who it had actually bought. Saying…