Blockchain Papers

Xiaodi Wang, Youbo Liu, Ruiguang Ma, Yunche Su · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Adamu Sani Yahaya, Nadeem Javaid, Sameeh Ullah, Rabiya Khalid · 8 authors

A Smart Community (SC) is an essential part of the Internet of Energy (IoE), which helps to integrate Electric Vehicles (EVs) and distributed renewable energy sources in a smart grid. As a result of the potential privacy and security challenges in the distributed energy system, it is becoming a great problem to optimally schedule EVs’ charging with different energy consumption patterns and perform reliable energy trading in the SC. In this paper, a blockchain‐based privacy‐preserving energy trading system for 5G‐deployed SC is proposed. The proposed system is divided into two components: EVs and residential prosumers. In this system, a reputation‐based distributed matching algorithm for EVs and a Reward‐based Starvation Free Energy Allocation Policy (RSFEAP) for residential homes are presented. A short‐term load forecasting model for EVs’ charging using multiple linear regression is proposed to plan and manage the intermittent charging behavior of EVs. In the proposed system, identity‐based encryption and homomorphic encryption techniques are integrated to protect the privacy of transactions and users, respectively. The performance of the proposed system for EVs’ component is evaluated using convergence duration, forecasting accuracy, and executional and transactional costs as performance metrics. For the residential prosumers’ component, the performance is evaluated using reward index, type of transactions, energy contributed, average convergence time, and the number of iterations as performance metrics. The simulation results for EVs’ charging forecasting gives an accuracy of 99.25%. For the EVs matching algorithm, the proposed privacy‐preserving algorithm converges faster than the bichromatic mutual nearest neighbor algorithm. For RSFEAP, the number of iterations for 50 prosumers is 8, which is smaller than the benchmark. Its convergence duration is also 10 times less than the benchmark scheme. Moreover, security and privacy analyses are presented. Finally, we carry out security vulnerability analysis of smart contracts to ensure that the proposed smart contracts are secure and bug‐free against the common vulnerabilities’ attacks. The results show that the smart contracts are secure against both internal and external attacks.

Morsy Nour, José Pablo Chaves Ávila, Álvaro Sánchez Miralles

Blockchain technology applications in the electricity sector are getting considerable attention from both academia and industry. It is expected that blockchain will play an important role in the transition to the smart grid. The blockchain applications in the electricity sector can be classified to optimizing existing processes like metering and billing or grid management and using blockchain for emerging applications such as creating new platforms for value exchange like peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. This paper briefly introduces the fundamentals of blockchain technology, such as different types of blockchain networks and consensus mechanisms, in addition to introducing a few blockchain platforms that are widely used in current studies, projects, and startups or may have future potential in the electricity sector applications. The contribution of this paper is to provide a review of potential applications of blockchain in many electricity sector use cases, and they are categorized into eight categories such as P2P energy trading, wholesale markets, retail markets, metering and billing, trading of renewable energy certificates (RECs) and carbon credits, electric mobility, enhancement of power system cyber security, investments in renewable energy sources (RESs), and power system operation and management. Moreover, examples of research studies, pilot projects, industrial projects, startups, or companies investigating the blockchain capabilities at each potential application are introduced. Furthermore, the studies presented in each use case are compared to clarify and highlight the blockchain functions and involved actors. Finally, the paper discusses the challenges that blockchain technology is facing that obstruct large-scale adoption in different sectors and in the electricity sector specifically and potential solutions to these challenges that are being developed.

Sergio Cantillo-Luna, Ricardo Moreno‐Chuquen, Harold R. Chamorro, Vijay K. Sood · 6 authors

Power grids all over the world are transitioning towards a decentralized structure. Under such a transition, blockchain technology is emerging as a potential solution for technical, deployment and decentralization issues, given its security, integrity, decentralized nature and required infrastructure. Moreover, blockchain technology offers excellent features like non-repudiation and immutability which makes it a promising application for DER integration and management on reliability factors. In this paper, a comprehensive review of blockchain applications for DER management and integration is presented. First, a blockchain-based literature review of research activities in the DER integration area and related tasks including entrepreneurial efforts is carried out. Next, the different opportunities and challenges of DER integration and management in power grids, i.e., centralization, regulatory support, development costs are discussed. Finally, some key research challenges and opportunities of including blockchain technology to DER integration and management issues are presented.

Rohit Chandra, K. R. Krishnanand, Sanjib Kumar Panda

No abstract is available for this record.

August Bruno, Paige Weber, Andrew J. Yates

No abstract is available for this record.

Yu-Jin Lin, Yu‐Cheng Chen, Jun-Yi Zheng, Dan-Wei Shao · 6 authors

A smart electric vehicle (EV) charging station energy management system (CSMS) based on blockchain technology, which aims to protect privacy of EV users, ensure fairness of power transactions, and meet charging demands for large numbers of EVs, is proposed in this study. EV charging pile is designed as a local blockchain distributed ledger node, which operates synchronously with blockchain system and blockchain distributed ledger in cloud server. This paper integrates CSMS through smart contracts, providing EV users that ability to conduct power transactions and perform optimal charging and discharging control in real-time. The distributed ledger is in charge of recording all the EV charging and discharging data to maintain fairness of power transactions, protects data from being maliciously tampered, and enables the EV user to monitor status of the EV participating in power transactions and dispatching. The intelligent CSMS consists of an artificial intelligence (AI) module, centralized optimal scheduling module, and decentralized optimal control module. The AI module is responsible for forecasting renewable energy generation and load consumption. There is a two-layer architecture consisting of centralized and decentralized optimal control modules; the upper layer performs optimal charging and discharging scheduling of the entire EV charging station at time 15-min time segments, the bottom layer performs distributed optimal scheduling control in each EV charging pile at 5 min time interval. Proposed system in this paper can deal with feeder congestion and real-time power supply and grid demand imbalance, which are caused by high numbers of EVs.

Francesco Buccafurri, Gianluca Lax, Lorenzo Musarella, Antonia Russo

The need for a flexible, dynamic, and decentralized energy market has rapidly grown in recent years. As a matter of fact, Industry 4.0 and Smart Grids are pursuing a path of automation of operations to insure all the steps among consumers and producers are getting closer. This leads towards solutions that exploit the paradigm of public blockchain, which represents the best platform to design flat and liquid markets for which providing trust and accountability to mutual interactions becomes crucial. On the other hand, one of the risks arising in this situation is that personal information is exposed to the network, with intolerable threats to privacy. In this paper, we propose a solution for energy trading, based on the blockchain Ethereum and Smart Contracts.The solution aims to be a concrete proposal to satisfy the needs of energy trading in smart grids, including the important feature that no information about the identity of the peers of the network is disclosed in advance.

Yohannes T. Aklilu, Jianguo Ding

Power generation, distribution, transmission, and consumption face ongoing challenges such as smart grid management, control, and operation, resulting from high energy demand, the diversity of energy sources, and environmental or regulatory issues. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain-based solutions for smart grid management, control, and operations. We systematically summarize existing work on the use and implementation of blockchain technology in various smart grid domains. The paper compares related reviews and highlights the challenges in the management, control, and operation for a blockchain-based smart grid as well as future research directions in the five categories: collaboration among stakeholders; data analysis and data management; control of grid imbalances; decentralization of grid management and operations; and security and privacy. All these aspects have not been covered in previous reviews.

Alain Aoun, Hussein Ibrahim, Mazen Ghandour, Adrian Ilinca

Global economic growth, demographic explosion, digitization, increased mobility, and greater demand for heating and cooling due to climate change in different world areas are the main drivers for the surge in energy demand. The increase in energy demand is the basis of economic challenges for power companies alongside several socio-economic problems in communities, such as energy poverty, defined as the insufficient coverage of energy needs, especially in the residential sector. Two main strategies are considered to meet this increased demand. The first strategy focuses on new sustainable and eco-friendly modes of power generation, such as renewable energy resources and distributed energy resources. The second strategy is demand-side oriented rather than the supply side. Demand-side management, demand response (DR), and energy efficiency (EE) programs fall under this category. On the other hand, the decentralization and digitization of the energy sector convoyed by the emersion of new technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), opened the door to new solutions for the energy demand dilemma. Among these technologies, blockchain has proved itself as a decentralized trading platform between untrusted peers without the involvement of a trusted third party. This newly introduced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading model can be used to create a new demand load control model. In this article, the concept of an energy cap and trade demand-side management (DSM) model is introduced and simulated. The introduced DSM model is based on the concept of capping consumers’ monthly energy consumption and rewarding consumers who do not exceed this cap with energy tradeable credits that can be traded using blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading. A model based on 200 households is used to simulate the proposed DSM model and prove that this model can be beneficial to both energy companies and consumers.

Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan · 5 authors

With advancements in renewable energy techno­logies, consumers are becoming prosumers, and renewable energy resources are being used in distributed networks. In an isolated distributed system, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is one of the most promising energy management solutions. In this paper, we propose a P2P energy trading method for micro-grids using open resources and technology. The proposed setup comprises an Internet of Things (IoT) server to transfer energy amongst the peers without human intervention, and an Ethereum based private blockchain is suggested for money transfer in the form of cryptocurrency. The IoT server enables the peers to control and monitor self-produced energy. Arduino UNO, ACS 712 hall-effect current sensor, and a relay are the main components used in the hardware setup. The current sensor data is sent in real- time to Arduino for onward communication to the IoT server. A user-friendly interface has been developed on the server to perform various energy trading tasks. Peers have the choice to access the server remotely to perform energy trading tasks. The energy trading events can be shared amongst peers through e-mail notifications. For financial transactions, we utilized Ganache graphical user interface (GUI) a private Ethereum blockchain eliminating the need for financial institutions. The proposed peer-to-peer energy trading model has been successfully tested for energy trading between two peers. This paper provides details of the proposed hardware and software setup and explains how low-cost P2P energy trading can be achieved.

Dimitri Saingre

Comprendre la consommation énergétique des blockchains : un regard sur les contrats intelligents Les systèmes de chaînes de blocs sont des registres répliqués dans un réseau pair à pair. Elles ont connu un développement rapide depuis quelques années en s'illustrant dans de nombreux domaines d'activités. En permettant le traitement et la sauvegarde de données dans un contexte distribué et Byzantin, ces technologies ont le potentiel de modifier de nombreux secteurs. Par exemple, dans le cadre de la finance décentralisée, les cryptomonnaies se développement comme une alternative aux monnaies fiduciaires en proposant un système de paiement dépourvu de tiers de confiance. Cependant, une certaine inquiétude vis-à-vis de l’impact environnemental des chaînes de blocs a émergé en parallèle de leur développement. En particulier, de nombreuses recherches ont démontré le coût énergétique important des chaînes basées sur les preuves de travail. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons de contribuer à l'étude expérimentale du coût énergétique des solutions logicielles basées sur les chaînes de blocs. Face à l'enrichissement progressif de l'écosystème lié aux chaînes de blocs, nous proposons BCTMark, un nouvel outil de déploiement et d'évaluation des performances des chaînes de blocs. Partant de cet outil, nous concentrons notre étude sur l'impact des contrats intelligents sur la chaîne de blocs Ethereum. D'une part, nous proposons un modèle pour l'estimation du coût énergétique des contrats intelligents développé pour Ethereum. D'autre part, nous proposons un nouveau protocole pour l'identification et l'élimination des contrats non utilisés dans le but de proposer des chaînes de blocs plus frugales en calculs et espaces de stockages.

Davide Strepparava, Lorenzo Nespoli, Evgenia Kapassa, Marios Touloupou · 6 authors

The adoption of blockchain technology is emerging as a promising approach in managing decentralized local energy markets (LEM). In this study we analyze the issues related to the deployment of a blockchain-based LEM on devices as much as possible similar to modern smart meters. The presented LEM is based on an automated market-making mechanism. Buying and selling prices are dynamically determined by the amount of energy consumed and produced within a local energy community. We implemented the market in a blockchain application based on the Cosmos framework, which was deployed on embedded devices in a test pilot consisting of 18 residential buildings in Southern Switzerland. The sustainability of the application was investigated by analyzing the resources required by the blockchain to operate. The obtained results show how the developed application uses a small part of the resources of the embedded devices, approximately 100 MB for the memory usage and about 4% as regards the CPU. Thus, while the application deployment on smart meters is still troublesome, especially for memory requirements, the deployment at the data concentrator level is reasonable and feasible. Finally, we propose possible improvements and extensions that can be implemented in future versions of the presented solution.

Chol Hyun Park, Grzegorz Chmaj, Henry Selvaraj

No abstract is available for this record.

Manuel Casquiço, Bruno Mataloto, João C. Ferreira, Vítor Monteiro · 6 authors

The decentralization in the electrical power grids has gained increasing importance, especially in the last two decades, since transmission system operators (TSO), distribution system operators (DSO) and consumers are more aware of energy efficiency and energy sustainability issues. Therefore, globally, due to the introduction of energy production technologies near the consumers, in residential and industrial sectors, new scenarios of distributed energy resources (DER) are emerging. In order to guarantee an adequate power management in the electrical power grids, incorporating producers, consumers and producers-consumers (prosumers) together, it is important to adopt intelligent systems and platforms that allow the provision of information on energy consumption and production in real time, as well as for obtaining a fair price for the sale and purchase of energy. In this paper, we analyze the literature to identify the appropriate solutions to implement a decentralized electrical power grid based on sensors, blockchain and smart contracts, evaluating the current state of the art and pilot projects already in place. We also discuss a proposal for a power grid model, with renewable energy production, combining Internet of Things, blockchain and smart contracts.

Dong Wang, Jiaxing Xuan, Zhiyu Chen, Da Li · 5 authors

With the continuous advancement of the green certificate trading mechanism, information verification needs to span multiple departments, which causes the application process cumbersome and human errors. In order to solve problems of cumbersome issuance process of the renewable energy certificate (REC) and the inflexible pricing mechanism, in this paper, a hybrid REC trading system was proposed based on an permissioned blockchain technology (BT), which combined advantages of the BT and the continuous double auction (CDA). The operation process of the system was introduced in detail, and the view change protocol in the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithm was revised according to the characteristics of the system to improve the system stability. The continuous double auction rule was also introduced in the system. And corresponding bidding strategies were designed to maximize the revenue of users (buyer and seller) and transaction probability. The simulation experiment proves that the bidding mechanism can flexibly adjust the REC price according to the supply and demand relationship. At the same time, the effectiveness and feasibility of trading rule and bidding strategy were also verified.

Yuki Matsuda, Yuto Yamazaki, Hiromu Oki, Y. Takeda · 6 authors

To further implement decentralized renewable energy resources, blockchain based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is gaining attention and its architecture has been proposed with virtual demonstrations. In this paper, to further socially implement this concept, a blockchain based peer to peer energy trading system which could coordinate with energy control hardware was constructed, and a demonstration experiment was conducted. Previous work focused on virtually matching energy supply and demand via blockchain P2P energy markets, and our work pushes this forward by demonstrating the possibility of actual energy flow control. In this demonstration, Plug-in Hybrid Electrical Vehicles(PHEVs) and Home Energy Management Systems(HEMS) actually used in daily life were controlled in coordination with the blockchain system. In construction, the need of a multi-tagged continuous market was found and proposed. In the demonstration experiment, the proposed blockchain market and hardware control interface was proven capable of securing and stably transmitting energy within the P2P energy system. Also, by the implementation of multi-tagged energy markets, the number of transactions required to secure the required amount of electricity was reduced.

Anette Boom, Sebastian Schwenen

No abstract is available for this record.

Rasel Mahmud, Gab‐Su Seo

This paper proposes a distributed control method based on a consensus algorithm for distributed energy resources (DERs) using blockchain as a secure communication medium for cyber resilience. Each DER communicates with a local blockchain server that is maintained by the distributed ledger technology to allow for securely sharing local measurements among neighbouring assets to achieve the global control objectives, i.e., voltage and frequency regulation as well as accurate power sharing among the DERs, including collective grid-forming capability. To prove that the distributed control can retain system stability under a blockchain-induced variable communication delay, Lyapunov function-based stability analysis is carried out. This paper demonstrates the concept on an 11-bus test case developed in MATLAB Simulink, which has been modified from the IEEE 9-bus test case, to study dynamic operations of the five inverter-based DERs working with a blockchain-induced variable delay. The results validate the superior performance of the proposed control method, compared to heavily compromised operations of the other test cases without the security measure, affected by heavy communication delays and communication interruptions.

Yue Wu, Junxiang Li, Jin Gao

Blockchain technology provides a comprehensive solution to user access and energy trading for distributed energy Internet. Achieving market-based pricing, increasing the earnings of energy suppliers, attracting foreign capital and facilitating the upgrade of solar and wind energy are pressing issues. Drawing on the practices of centralised exchanges and blockchain cryptocurrency, the author designed the Cryptocurrency Energy Trading Platform (CETP), dividing the permissioned blockchain into the Energy Blockchain Platform (EBP) and the Energy Cryptocurrency Exchange (ECE). The frequently used real-time bidding scenario and the seldom-used power-using scenario are separated from each other. A market welfare model for real-time bidding is established and verified. With Energy Blockchain Cryptocurrency (EBC) as the trading medium, the platform allows external bidders to get involved in the bidding and transactions, which not only attracts the social capital to be used in the development of energy Internet but also helps stabilise the energy market prices, thus, advancing the energy Internet.

Nan Wang, Chi-Kin Chau, Yue Zhou

Energy storage provides an effective way of shifting temporal energy demands and supplies, which enables significant cost reduction under time-of-use energy pricing plans. Despite its promising benefits, the cost of present energy storage remains expensive, presenting a major obstacle to practical deployment. A more viable solution to improve the cost-effectiveness is by sharing energy storage, such as community sharing, cloud energy storage and peer-to-peer sharing. However, revealing private energy demand data to an external energy storage operator may compromise user privacy, and is susceptible to data misuses and breaches. In this paper, we explore a novel approach to support energy storage sharing with privacy protection, based on privacy-preserving blockchain and secure multi-party computation. We present an integrated solution to enable privacy-preserving energy storage sharing, such that energy storage service scheduling and cost-sharing can be attained without the knowledge of individual users' demands. It also supports auditing and verification by the grid operator via blockchain. Furthermore, our privacy-preserving solution can safeguard against a majority of dishonest users, who may collude in cheating, without requiring a trusted third-party. We implemented our solution as a smart contract on real-world Ethereum blockchain platform, and provided empirical evaluation in this paper 1 .

Stefan P. M. Chantrel, Arne Surmann, Thomas Erge, Jessica Thomsen

Distributed solar photovoltaic generation is less expensive than the retail price of electricity from the grid in most parts of Europe. Growing shares of variable generation place a focus on Renewable Energy Communities (REC) to increase the economic benefits of local energy systems. Civil society could play an influential and necessary role in the development of such communities, the expansion of renewable energy capacity and the provision of flexibility. However, current RECs models still confine tenants to their role as non-participating consumers. This article provides a concept to enable participative RECs within the German regulatory framework through collective self-consumption by including consumers for a fair allocation of renewable electricity using the blockchain technology.

Sambeet Mishra, Cletus Crasta, Chiara Bordin, Jordi Mateo

Energy as a service (EaaS) is an emerging business model that enables the otherwise passive energy consumers to play an active role and participate in the energy utility services. This platform is formed through smart contracts registering peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions of energy through price and quantity. Many industries, including finance, have already leveraged smart contracts to introduce digital currencies. At this time, the utility industry is faced with the challenge of how to structure smart contract formation in a local energy market. Specifically, they are faced with the challenge of maintaining a balance between energy generation and demand while enabling traceability, security, and unbiased peer-to-peer energy transactions, especially within a virtual power plant. This article aims at addressing the aforementioned challenges. In particular, this article investigates how to structure the microgrids in a local energy market, and how to ensure balance and resiliency with incomplete information. Taking various generation asset dimensions and demand profiles into account, simulations are performed. A novel evolutionary computing strategy to structure the simulation is proposed. A comparison is made among random order, random selection, profit-based ranking, and evolutionary strategy for coordinating the contract formation. The discussions draw attention to each method's advantages and disadvantages in terms of their value as a strategy for forming smart contracts in a local energy market.

Benoit Couraud, Valentin Robu, David Flynn, Merlinda Andoni · 6 authors

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in distributed residential batteries for households with renewable generation. Yet, assuring battery assets are profitable for their owners requires a complex optimisation of the battery asset and additional revenue sources, such as novel ways to access wholesale energy markets. In this paper, we propose a framework in which wholesale market bids are placed on forward energy markets by an aggregator of distributed residential batteries that are controlled in real time by a novel Home Energy Management System (HEMS) control algorithm to meet the market commitments, while maximising local self-consumption. The proposed framework consists of three stages. In the first stage, an optimal day-ahead or intra-day scheduling of the aggregated storage assets is computed centrally. For the second stage, a bidding strategy is developed for wholesale energy markets. Finally, in the third stage, a novel HEMS real-time control algorithm based on a smart contract allows coordination of residential batteries to meet the market commitments and maximise self-consumption of local production. Using a case study provided by a large U.K.-based energy demonstrator, we apply the framework to an aggregator with 70 residential batteries. Experimental analysis is done using real per minute data for demand and production. Results indicate that the proposed approach increases the aggregator's revenues by 35% compared to a case without residential flexibility, and increases the self-consumption rate of the households by a factor of two. The robustness of the results to uncertainty, forecast errors and to communication latency is also demonstrated.