Automated Energy Transaction and Incentivization of Prosumers and Consumers through Smart Contracts

Abstract

World’s population is rapidly expanding, and so is the need for an uninterrupted power supply. Along with this, there is also a rapid rise in tech-savvy initiatives and industrialization. All these lead to an increase in the carbon footprint, thereby resulting in an increasingly polluted world. Most governments, regardless of their politics, are pledging to reduce their carbon emissions and shift to greener energy resources. Integrating renewable energy (RE) into the current energy system is a key step in that direction, but the existing energy infrastructure is incapable of incorporating RE sources and catering to the rising demands without technological interventions. Electricity obtained through RE is very volatile and subject to environmental conditions. In such a scenario, the RE alone would not be able to support the grid at peak demand times. Grid would need additional support in the form of demand response (DR). DR incentivizes consumers to reduce their electricity usage during peak demand, but calculating the real-time data of all the consumers and rewarding them becomes a hassle without smart, secure, and reliable communication and storage systems. Hence, to enhance participant trust and automate the entire DR process, blockchain and smart contracts (SC) are viable solutions due to their transparency and immutability. This paper works on a SC-based DR programme to incentivize users based on their choices using an ethereum test network (testnet).