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.
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.
Zahra Foroozandeh, Sérgio Ramos, João Soares, Zita Vale
This paper proposed a Mixed Binary Linear Programming (MBLP) approach to find the optimal size of some components of a Smart Building (SB) attempting to reduce the overall cost. The considered SB is equipped with local resources such as Photovoltaic (PV) panels, Electrical Vehicles (EVs), and the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Moreover, the SB is only connected with the grid by an Energy Management System (EMS) in which the whole SB has a single Contract Power (CP) such that EMS manages the power flow among external grid, local resources, apartments, and common services, for the goal of reducing the electricity bill. Hence, the wrong choice of CP and BESS capacity will impose unnecessary charges on the electricity bill. As a results, EMS has played a crucial role in SB in determining the best CP and BESS values. The obtained results of this work show the efficiency of the model in which by finding the optimal capacity of CP and BESS, the electricity bill improves by a 34% reduction.
The promising power-to-gas (P2G) technology makes it possible for wind farms to absorb carbon and trade in multiple energy markets. Considering the remoteness of wind farms equipped with P2G systems and the isolation of different energy markets, the scheduling process may suffer from inefficient coordination and unstable information. An automated scheduling approach is thus proposed. Firstly, an automated scheduling framework enabled by smart contract is established for reliable coordination between wind farms and multiple energy markets. Considering the limited logic complexity and insufficient calculation of smart contracts, an off-chain procedure as a workaround is proposed to avoid complex on-chain solutions. Next, a non-linear model of the P2G system is developed to enhance the accuracy of scheduling results. The scheduling strategy takes into account not only the revenues from multiple energy trades, but also the penalties for violating contract items in smart contracts. Then, the implementation of smart contracts under a blockchain environment is presented with multiple participants, including voting in an agreed scheduling result as the plan. Finally, the case study is conducted in a typical two-stage scheduling process—i.e., day-ahead and real-time scheduling—and the results verify the efficiency of the proposed approach.
Ritesh Mohan Acharya, B. Hanumantha Rao, M. P. Selvan
The energy sector is undergoing an enormous transition with new market mechanisms affecting the market and the traders. In the smart grid environment, an auction-based market can be useful to ensure trading between electric vehicles (EVs) and distribution companies (DisComs). However, the participation of EVs in the energy market poses specific issues. The first one is the involvement of aggregator/ auctioneer in trading procedures, which affects the energy trading as well as privacy of the EV owners. Second one is the auction mechanism should fulfill all critical economic properties, strategic and non-strategic constraints. In order to address these issues, a novel aggregator free mechanism is proposed in this paper allowing EVs to securely participate in the ancillary services market. A smart contract deployed in Blockchain is used for market-clearing. This paper proposes two kinds of implementation of auction-based ancillary services market in the distribution system. Through an extensive study performed on a hypothetical group of 76 561 EVs and 13 DisComs, it is found that the performance of the proposed scheme is superior in decentralized implementation compared to centralized implementation.
Regulating and supervising the energy vehicle (EV) power battery recycling market, improving the utilization rate of EV power battery recycling, and guaranteeing the safety and control of all aspects of recycling treatment require the establishment of an effective traceability system. The decentralization and tamper-proof characteristics of the blockchain can ensure the safety and reliability of relevant data while realizing traceability management. This study establishes the Stackelberg game model to compare and analyze the effects of different government mechanisms on the profits of each subject before and after participating in power battery traceability management. The study further uses the model to explore strategies to improve the enthusiasm of EV power battery recycling subjects to participate in traceability management. The results show that (1) the participation of each recycling subject in EV power battery blockchain traceability can help move more spent power batteries into formal recycling channels; (2) the government should adopt appropriate mechanisms to promote its participation in EV power battery blockchain traceability, the best result being when the government adopts a subsidy mechanism for consumers; and (3) the profit of the EV power battery manufacturer is inversely proportional to the target recycling rate set by the government. Furthermore, the pursuit of a very high target recycling rate is not conducive to the normal implementation of initial EV power battery blockchain traceability management. Therefore, it is crucial for the government to set a reasonable target recycling rate.
Blockchain and smart contract technology is advancing rapidly and, as many companies and industries are stepping up to adopt the technology, it is a worthy subject of research. This study presents a decentralized microgrid model that considers blockchain and smart contract technology. We consider a microgrid consisting of two players: a power distribution company (DC) and an electricity prosumer. The cost-benefit analysis of utilising blockchain and smart contract technology is assessed through an evaluation model for the two players. Further, to encourage the prosumer to generate renewable energy, a credit period that allows the prosumer to defer payments is provided by outside banks. A game-theoretical method is applied to analyse the decision-making by the two players, seeking to maximise their own profits. The DC acts as a leader who determines the electricity price and blockchain technology investment level, and the prosumer is a follower who determines how much renewable energy should be generated. The results show that the adoption of blockchain and smart contract technology benefits both the DC and prosumer in a decentralized microgrid. Further, several examples are provided to illustrate the model and obtain managerial insights.
In intelligent transportation systems (ITS), electric vehicles (EVs) play an essential role in reducing environmental pollution and minimizing high fuel costs. The EVs are three times efficient than conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, whereas it depends on the mix of source generation on the grid utilized for charging. However, in most cases, the EVs are resultant in emitting the more substantial greenhouse gas that extends fossil fuels’ lives. Therefore, the ITS contributing to developing the renewable energy management process is incorporated with electric vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas. The EVs are mostly designed to reduce the cost and improve efficiency during the charging infrastructure. Hence, renewable energies are saved exclusively and eliminating wasteful usage. In this work, a blockchain-based effective renewable energy management process should be created to achieve this goal. The blockchain process validates each EV before permitting them to charge their vehicle. The blockchain principle analyzes the energy demand of any EV and validates its demand through vehicle data. The validation process enables the same and original energy use vessel to be identified to remove threats associated activities efficiently. The validating process considering the vehicle information and energy utilization level to verify the EV. The block-based validation process monitoring each vehicle entered into the grid environment, and the ITS process minimizes the fuel wastage and enhances the system’s overall efficiency.
In this paper, we propose a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading scheme between EVs and the SPs to manage the demand response in V2G environment. Unlike the traditional schemes, which consists of complex energy-transportation meshes, the proposed scheme achieves a balance between demand and response by providing incentives to EVs out of their self-interests. However, the online transactions security and privacy protection of EVs poses challenges with respect to confidentiality and integrity preservation. To cope up with the issues, we design a consortium blockchain-based scheme to ensure secure energy transactions between EVs and the SPs without trusted third-party intervention. Moreover, the energy pricing and the amount of traded energy problems for demand response are solved by a double auction mechanism to maximize the social welfare. Numerical results based on a real-time implementation on a private Ethereum network having smart contract demonstrated that the auction-based mechanism achieves social welfare maximization with privacy protection of online transactions between EVs and the SPs. The results obtained show that the rate of convergence, scalability metric average latency, and standard deviation of the energy transactions have been improved by approximately 18.18%, 15%, and 28.1%, respectively in comparison to the existing schemes. Moreover, security and privacy analysis of the proposed scheme shows that it improves the transaction security substantially in comparison to the existing state-of-the-art proposals.
An energy trading system is essential for the successful integration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) into the smart grid. In this paper, leveraging blockchain technology, we first propose a privacy-preserving charging-station-to-vehicle (CS2V) energy trading scheme. The CS2V scheme is useful in crowded cities where there is a need for a charging infrastructure that can charge many EVs daily. We also propose a privacy-preserving vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) energy trading scheme. The V2V scheme is useful when charging stations are not available or far and cheaper prices can be offered from EVs, e.g., if they charge from renewable energy sources. In the V2V scheme, the privacy of both charging and discharging EVs including location, time, and amount of power are preserved. To preserve privacy in both schemes, EVs are anonymous, however, a malicious EV may abuse the anonymity to launch Sybil attacks by pretending as multiple non-exiting EVs to launch powerful attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS) by submitting multiple reservations/offers without committing to them, to prevent other EVs from charging and make the trading system unreliable. To thwart the Sybil attacks, we use a common prefix linkable anonymous authentication scheme, so that if an EV submits multiple reservations/offers at the same timeslot, the blockchain can identify such submissions. To further protect the privacy of EV drivers, we introduce an anonymous and efficient blockchain-based payment system that cannot link individual drivers to specific charging locations. Our experimental results indicate that our schemes are secure and privacy-preserving with low communication and computation overheads.
The world is moving rapidly from carbon-producing vehicles to green transportation systems. Electric vehicles (EV) are a big step towards a friendly mode of transport. With the constant rise in the number of electric vehicles, we need a widespread and seamless charging infrastructure that supports seamless charging and billing. Some users generate electricity using solar panels and charge their electric vehicles. In contrast, some use charging stations, and they pay for vehicle charging. This raises the question of trust and transparency. There are many countries where laws are not strictly enforced to prevent fraud in payment systems. One of the preeminent problems presently existing with any of the trading systems is the lack of transparency. The service provider can overcharge the customer. Blockchain is a modern-day solution that mitigates trust and privacy issues. We have proposed a peer-to-peer energy trading and charging payment system for electric vehicles based on blockchain technology. Users who have excess electricity which they can sell to the charging stations through smart contracts. Electric vehicle users can pay the charging bills through electronic wallets. We have developed the electric vehicle’s automatic-payment system using the open-source platform Hyperledger fabric. The proposed system will reduce human interaction and increase trust, transparency, and privacy among EV participants. We have analyzed the resource utilization and also performed average transaction latency and throughput evaluation. This system can be helpful for the policymakers of smart cities.
Matthew Gough, Sérgio F. Santos, Artur Almeida, Mohammad Sadegh Javadi · 7 authors
The combination of consumer owned Distributed Energy Resources, new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as well as changes to the national electricity regulations have created new opportunities for consumer engagement in the electricity sector. In this paper, this combination of technologies and regulations is examined in the Portuguese context. The new regulations dealing with self-consumption from prosumers are combined with smart contracts and distributed ledger technology to formulate an automated energy trading system for residential end-users in local energy markets. Results show that including prosumers in the local energy market brings significant benefits to all market participants. Additionally, results show that the newly created regulatory role of a Market Facilitator is beneficial to these type of local energy exchanges.
As the energy internet develops, it will become possible to carry out peer-to-peer energy trading among prosumers. Different from traditional commodity trading, the process of P2P electricity trading will be affected by physical constraints such as network congestion. To avoid transaction failure, a superconducting energy storage unit is introduced. First, we established the overall structure of the electric vehicle P2P energy trading, and designed the blockchain network and smart contracts; then analyze the benefits of each user entity in the system, and optimize the user matching in the transaction process; After that, we used the co-operative game algorithm to realize P2P electricity transaction pricing model. Finally, the simulation and analysis results show that the use of superconducting energy storage has effectively improved the success rate and demand consumption rate of electric vehicle P2P energy trading.
Athira Nair K, Chaitanya Kapoor, Nidhin Mahesh A, Sai Shibu N B · 5 authors
The demand for Electric vehicles (EV) are growing day by day. But the power grid is operating in bottleneck to meet customer power requirements. Blockchain technology is being used in applications that involves transaction between untrusted entities. We propose blockchain enabled energy pooling platform with smart buildings and EVs. This platform enables peer to peer energy transactions between buildings and EVs. Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems generate power during daytime and utilised by the loads. We propose, EVs to store the excess energy generated from the rooftop PV system. EVs will discharge the stored energy during night or when there is an energy demand. We have demonstrated this concept with two use cases using Ethereum Platform on Google Cloud Platform. We also developed a Fuzzy Logic based smart contract to decide incentives for energy storage and discharge. We envision that this platform will help EV owners, OEMs and grid operators to maximise their system efficiency and help recoup their investment.
Purchases of electric vehicles have been increasing in recent years. These vehicles differ from traditional fossil-fuel-based vehicles especially in the time consumed to keep them running. Electric-Vehicle-charging Service Providers (EVSPs) must arrange reasonable charging times for users in advance. Most EVSP services are based on third-party platforms, but reliance on third-party platforms creates a lack of security, leaving users vulnerable to attacks and user-privacy leakages. In this paper, we propose an anonymous blockchain-based system for charging-connected electric vehicles that eliminates third-party platforms through blockchain technology and the establishment of a multi-party security system between electric vehicles and EVSPs. In our proposed system, digital certificates are obtained by completing distributed Public Key Infrastructure (distributed-PKI) identity registration, with the user registration kept separate from the verification process, which eliminates dependence on the EVSP for information security. In the verification process, we adopt smart contracts to solve problems associated with centralized verification and opaque services. Furthermore, we utilize zero-knowledge proof and ring-signature superposition to realize completely anonymous verification, which ensures undeniability and unforgeability with no detriment to anonymity. The evaluation results show that the user anonymity, information authenticity, and system security of our system fulfill the necessary requirements.
Zakaria Abou El Houda, Abdelhakim Hafid, Lyes Khoukhi
The emergence of Internet of Energy (IoE) paves the way for sustainable and green energy environments that reduce energy costs and integrate Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) as new sources of energy. Electric vehicles (EVs) are one of the main actors of IoE future. The emergence of EVs promises to reduce the environmental crisis (e.g., carbon emissions); however, their charging process will consume massive amounts of electricity and may affect the reliability of the Smart Grid (SG). Recently, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) electricity trading approach has gained momentum as a novel strategy that reduces the peak power consumption in SG. In this context, EVs compete to provide electricity with lower prices, while maintaining the V2V electricity trading system secure. However, they lack flexibility, transparency, and authenticity. More importantly, they are based on centralized models (i.e., EV aggregators) which introduce single-point-of-failure and may cause the collapse of the system. In this paper, we propose a fully decentralized blockchain-based system that allows for an automated, fair, and trustworthy V2V electricity trading system; it uses Ethereum’s smart contracts to realize the V2V electricity trading system in a fully distributed, transparent, secure, tamper-proof and trustworthy manner. The proposed system is implemented, tested, and deployed on the Ethereum official test network Ropsten. The experiment results show that the proposed solution achieves security, flexibility, efficiency, and cost effectiveness making it a promising solution to new decentralized V2V electricity trading systems in SG.
With the development of the Energy Internet and the support of the subsidy policies of various countries, Electric Vehicles(EVs) have ushered in a golden development period. However, the development of EVs needs to solve the problems of insufficient charging piles(CPs) and difficulty in finding CPs. In order to solve the problem of difficult charging of EVs, the concept of shared charging came into being, in which idle CPs or private CPs are shared to meet the charging needs of more people and improve the utilization rate of CPs. However, the shared charging scheme implemented by third-party platforms faces the issue of trust lacking. This paper proposes a blockchain architecture for shared charging, which can use the blockchain to build a trust environment involving private pile owners, charging pile(CP) operators, Electric Vehicle(EV) users, etc.. The blockchain architecture also contains the block structure where pointer was added for quick search, contract content that can automatically execute multi-party contracts to achieve secure computing and reputation-based incentive mechanism to provide high-quality charging services in detail. This architecture establishes the multi-party trust environment for shared charging from three aspects: secure storage, secure computing, and secure incentives.
As people pay more attention to environment protection, the number of electric vehicles (EVs) is gradually increasing. Energy trading management for EVs is becoming a challenge. However, existing research has not considered the problem of information sharing between energy traders and issues surrounding the protection of user privacy. Therefore, in this article, we propose a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electricity trading architecture based on blockchain. All energy transactions of EVs can be recorded on the blockchain ledger to ensure privacy and smart contracts work as agents for pricing and optimal energy allocation. Furthermore, we introduce a two-way auction mechanism based on the Bayesian game and design a new price adjustment strategy. Finally, we propose a bidirectional auction mechanism based on the Bayesian game approach. We use extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that the social welfare and cost performance of our algorithm can be improved by up to 102.8% and 319%, respectively.
Based on the diffusion of blockchain technology in the smart grid, this paper studies the framework and application of the blockchain technology in the smart grid, so as to combine the blockchain with the smart grid and establish a sustainable supply chain. However, the establishment of a sustainable supply chain is based on a layered theoretical framework. Not only should the framework take into account needless attributes and the relationship among various criteria and aspects but the application should also involve a balance of multiple stakeholders. For the above reasons, this paper uses a combination of Fuzzy-DEMATEL and ISM. The results show that (1) the hierarchical path of sustainable supply chain management of the smart grid under the blockchain starts from the social level, pays attention to system construction, grasps the technical standards, and defines the development goals of the power grid. (2) The development of green energy has become a new market growth point. (3) The control of the operation level becomes the focus of the smart grid. (4) The optimization and development of the economic structure are restricted by social factors. By integrating and optimizing the blockchain and supply chain, this paper puts forward a theoretical framework, establishes a sustainable GIP application system with multistakeholder participation at the supply chain level, and indicates the significance of the blockchain in the smart grid.