A blockchain based incentive mechanism for increasing collective self-consumption in a nonsumer community

Abstract

As subsidised feed-in-tariffs for distributed photovoltaic generation are reduced or abolished in many jurisdictions, there is growing interest in increasing self-consumption to realise greater value from rooftop PV generation. This paper proposes a blockchain based incentive mechanism for nonsumer communities with a centralized aggregator approach with the objective of increasing collective self-consumption and reduce peak demand. The incentive is implemented on a permissioned blockchain infrastructure, where generations and consumptions values are stored to the immutable ledger and smart contracts are used to implement the rewards calculation. In order to illustrate the developed incentive, the paper applies the method to four dwellings located in the south of Italy.