A Light Blockchain for Behind-the-Meter Peer-to-Peer Energy Transactions in Cyber-Physical Power Systems

Abstract

Household-level distributed energy sources, such as rooftop photovoltaic, microturbines, and energy storage, become important behind-the-meter (BTM) resources. BTM resources can meet all or part of users’ demands. Establishing a peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading network among these users will further promote the utilization of BTM resources. However, such a proposal faces the problem that cyber trading and physical dispatching are difficult to coordinate. Therefore, this paper proposes the architecture of the behind-the-meter peer-to-peer (BTM-P2P) energy trading system, including the cyber layer and physical layer. To ensure that users strictly execute the cyber trading results in the physical layer, a trading mechanism considering credit is designed, and the user’s credit has an impact on the bidding priority, which in turn urges the user to strictly execute in subsequent tradings. Then, a light blockchain suitable for energy trading is developed, ensuring that both the trading results and the actual dispatching results are not tampered with. Database technology is inserted in the light blockchain to improve efficiency. Finally, a BTM-P2P cyber-physical testbed coupling physical dispatching with cyber trading is built, providing technical support for the implementation of BTM-P2P.