Distributed optimization of power profiles on a local energy community using blockchain

Abstract

This paper presents a private blockchain environment designed to optimize energy exchanges and reach consensus between different users on a university grid. The objectives of this work are to present a fully distributed energy sharing framework that takes into account the individual preferences of the users, and to give guidelines for development of blockchain applications relative to energy sharing. A private Ethereum blockchain with a Proof-of-Authority mechanism is deployed on a local energy community. A smart contract written in Solidity is used to perform distributed optimization under a global power constraint. Python client are used to enable direct interactions between users and the smart contract. The simulations performed on real data show that consensus is obtained after a few iterations, and thus prove that our framework has the potential to be practically used in real situations.