Data Collection and Evaluation Framework for Local Energy Systems

Abstract

Increasing presence of distributed energy resources (DERs) is evolving electricity distribution system to decentralized and active networks. Utilising the data emerging from such networks is an essential step for developing sustainable future energy systems, as such systems must be closely monitored and managed to avoid blackouts and failures. The datasets within energy systems are very large, must be immutable, are often interrelated, yet owned by competing organisations. How then should these datasets be stored and shared? This is the main focus of my research. To provide a reliable way of collecting, storing, sharing, and analysing energy systems data, I propose to use the newly emerging distributed ledger technology. I will work towards developing a middleware-like platform over distributed ledgers, which would aim to provide a reliable data storage solution for immutable energy datasets, while also maintaining relationships between the datasets and addressing the read and write latency and scalability problems of the present distributed ledgers.