Ma Abdelwahed, Tarek A. Boghdady, Ah Madian, Raafat Shalaby
Energy and clean energy are big concerns and interests. As the needs differ from area to another, different solutions appear. Energy cost, availability, reliability and trading rules are important keys in energy market. Energy sharing is a hot topic as a consumer being a part of the sustainable distributed system also making benefits such as Prosumer. Blockchain technology provides more secure, distributed and fast way to transact financial payments between clients. This paper provide a simulation case for energy sharing concept using smart contract as a tool to rule the sharing process on isolated network to obtain the optimum performance and efficiency of the service. Creating a base for more conditions and complex scenarios and linking the sharing process to financial transactions.
Connected electric vehicles (CEVs) can help cities to reduce road congestion and increase road safety. With the technical improvement made to the battery system in terms of capacity and flexibility, CEVs, as mobile power plants can be an important actor for the electricity markets. Especially, they can trade electricity between each other when supply stations are full or temporarily not available. In this article, we propose an advanced decentralized electricity trading framework between CEVs in parking lots based on consortium blockchain, machine learning, and Game theoretic model. We design a distributed smart contract solution based on a stochastic bidding process, which helps CEVs to sell and buy electricity with their maximum profitability. Finally, numerical simulations with MATLAB and Solidity are conducted to prove the effectiveness of our proposed solution. Also, a comparison with another method in terms of CEVs' profitability improvement and energy trading management is provided.
The increasing penetration of renewable energy and its inherent uncertainty necessitate the development of energy storage in the power system. Currently, the value of energy storage is still not fully unlocked because of 1) misallocation between the energy storage demands and resources, 2) lack of an energy storage sharing mechanism. To solve the above limitations, this paper designs an energy storage sharing mechanism via blockchain. A bidding model is established to optimize the bidding strategies of energy storage in joint energy, frequency, and FRP (flexible ramping product) market. Then, a blockchain-based P2P (peer-to-peer) energy storage sharing mechanism in the joint markets is proposed to enable trustworthy and transparent trading. Simulation results on a Substrate private blockchain verify the efficiency of the proposed mechanism.
Many countries in Europe are adopting a deregulated system where prosumers can subscribe with any energy supplier in an open market, independently of location. However, the mobility aspect of transactions in the existing system is not satisfactorily covered. For instance, if a person receives the service of charging an EV from a prosumer's local outlet, he cannot pay to the prosumer directly without the presence of an intermediary system. This has led to a situation where the EV owners need to have a large number of subscriptions for EV charging providers and visitors cannot pay for the electricity used there. This study evaluates this mobility gap and proposes a solution for charging transactions using blockchain technology. Furthermore, we implement a proof of concept using the Hyperledger consortium platform for the technical feasibility of the proposed approach and evaluate the performance metrics such as transaction latency and throughput.
Emissions trading is a cost-effective climate policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It could also be useful for addressing road transport emissions, especially given that this sector is the largest CO2 emitter in the transportation sector and its emissions continue to increase. However, emissions trading for road transport (ETS-RT) has rarely been implemented due to its complexity. This paper designs a novel and practical policy framework for an ETS-RT based on advanced blockchain technology, including all related entities upstream, midstream and downstream of the road transport sector. First, the government determines the cap and allocates the initial permits. Then, fuel producers, vehicle manufacturers, and vehicle users are involved as regulated entities with tradable emission permits. They are responsible for the three determinants of CO2 emissions in the road transport sector: fuel emission factors, vehicle fuel economy, and vehicle miles travelled, respectively. With all the regulated entities collaborating on compliance, the three determinants can be synergistically optimized so that the efficiency of the emissions abatement can be maximized. In addition, all trading, monitoring, reporting, and verification of the emission permits are automatically executed and recorded via a smart contract deployed on a decentralized blockchain. This approach can dramatically reduce administrative costs, improve transparency and traceability, and eliminate double counting and fraud. Finally, the proposed policy was evaluated using a multicriteria analysis method compared with other possible ETS-RT approaches.Key policy insights Fuel producers, vehicle manufacturers, and vehicle users – who are respectively responsible for fuel emission factors, vehicle fuel economy and vehicle miles travelled – should be synergistically regulated in an ETS-RT to maximize the efficiency of emissions abatement.This can be enabled by advanced blockchain technology, which can eliminate the need for a central authority, while enhancing transparency, traceability and cost-effectiveness.Blockchain technology could also be useful for monitoring, reporting and verification under the Paris Agreement.A blockchain-based ETS-RT is found to outperform other forms of ETS on criteria of acceptability, feasibility and environmental performance.
Raziq Yaqub, Sadiq Ahmad, Hassan Ali, Azzam ul Asar
Due to the proliferation of extended travel range electric vehicles (EVs), these will travel through different networks that might be served by different utility companies. Therefore, we propose an architecture capable of offering a charging service to roaming vehicles. Furthermore, although the energy internet supports both the flow of energy and information, it does not support seamless EV roaming service, because it is based on a centralized architecture. The blockchain technology that is based on a decentralized system has the potential to support a secure billing platform for charging the EVs roaming through different electrical jurisdictions. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) ensures that the participating players get a fair portion of the revenue. Thus, the objective of this paper is to develop an AI and blockchain integrated billing architecture that would offer a charging service to the “roaming” EVs and present a fair and unified billing solution.
Yingchun Feng, Jie Fan, Hao Chen, Qixin Wang · 6 authors
Abstract Transnational power trading can promote the development of global energy Internet, which can enable various countries and regions to optimize the allocation of resources on a larger scale. However, transnational electricity trading still faces many challenges. First, the issues of trust, member management, and huge transaction volume hinder the development of transnational power trading. Second, the issues of considering the differences among countries and establishing a reasonable and efficient transnational power market trading mechanism are also particularly important. The emergence of a consortium‐blockchain technology provides a new idea of solving these problems. The distributed‐ledger technology and member‐management services of a consortium blockchain can solve the problems of trust in the transnational power transaction and access the review of market subjects. Simultaneously, the chain‐code technology can be used to improve the efficiency of transactions. Therefore, according to the actual needs of transnational power transactions, the applicability of the consortium‐blockchain technology was analysed. Then, a mathematical model of transnational power transactions that considered the transaction costs was designed, and simulation tests were conducted on Hyperledger Fabric. The calculation example shows that the proposed transaction model plays a positive role and significance in promoting transnational power transactions and stabilizing the market.
Abstract To reduce emissions in the maritime transport sector, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) follows a global clean shipping strategy. Among the different directives of IMO, currently especially the sulphur emission regulations pose challenges for the shipping industry. Related to this are the established Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) and the introduced global sulphur cap. To comply with the sulphur restrictions, according to the present technological state of the art, ship-owners have three options for their existing fleet: the installation of emission abatement technologies, the switch to low sulphur fuels, or retrofitting for the usage of alternative fuels. Regardless which option is favoured, most often selected solutions still depend on fossil fuels. The reasons for this can be traced back to the fact that supply of biofuels is not ensured in ports and generally seen as no profitable solution. This paper develops and examines an innovative business model with a special focus on liquefied biogas (LBG). The study bases on collected qualitative and quantitative data, which was used by applying the Business Model Canvas. The results will highlight that the business model bears the potential to promote LBG supply. Next to this, the research will show that blockchain and smart contracts are able to foster the implementation of the business model and optimisation of value chain operations. Lastly, economic advantages were highlighted within a case study that refers to the seaport Karlskrona in Sweden and the RoPax ferries from Stena Line that travel back and forth to Gdynia seaport in Poland.
Recently, under the influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the government is attempting a new field of revitalization of the power energy trading market in the energy industry. With the advent of prosumers that generate and consume electricity by themselves, the need to promote transparent transactions by establishing a safe and reasonable transaction platform for energy transactions has increased. With the development of blockchain technology, the research has been actively conducted, and interest in services incorporating blockchain is increasing in various fields, and various studies incorporating blockchain into the energy transaction field have been actively conducted. Along with the need for a transparent energy trading platform, the need for electric vehicle charging infrastructure and power load management, one of the core technologies of smart grid, is also increasing. Therefore, this study aims to build a V2G energy transaction system based on the consortium blockchain and develop an application for transaction activation. In addition, it intends to incorporate the blockchain system into real life and lay the foundation for commercialization of the blockchain system.
Oct 8, 2020·Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing
Vikas Hassija, Vatsal Gupta, Vinay Chamola, Salil S. Kanhare
The rapidly increasing mobile traffic across the globe has proliferated the deployment of cellular base stations, which has, in turn, led to an increase in the power consumption and carbon footprint of the telecommunications industry. In recent times, solar-powered base stations (SPBSs) have gained much popularity in the telecom sector due to their ability to make operations more sustainable. However, some potential energy benefits rendered by the SPBSs have not yet been realized. In areas with dense base station deployment or low mobile traffic, SPBSs store surplus energy, which, in most instances, gets lost due to limited charge storage capacity of the batteries. To limit the wastage of energy, an appropriate mechanism enabling the utilization of excess energy produced by these base stations can be adopted. To this end, we model a Base Station-to-Grid (BS2G) network in which the grid can utilize surplus energy spared by the SPBSs. To overcome challenges in regards to scalability, robustness, and cost-optimization, we propose using the blockchain technology to create the BS2G network. Blockchain is a distributed ledger designed to record transactions in a transparent, lightweight, and tamper-proof manner. To make energy trade between base stations and the grid cost-effective, a game-theoretical approach has also been adopted in this paper. The proposed model simplifies the process of energy trading while also making it cost-optimal.
Jianxiong Guo, Xingjian Ding, Weili Wu, Ding‐Zhu Du
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are becoming more and more popular in our daily life, which replaces traditional fuel vehicles to reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment. EVs need to be charged, but the number of charging piles in a Charging Station (CS) is limited and charging is usually more time-consuming than fueling. According to this scenario, we propose a secure and efficient charging scheduling system based on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-blockchain and double auction mechanism. In a smart area, it attempts to assign EVs to the available CSs in the light of their submitted charging requests and status information. First, we design a lightweight charging scheduling framework that integrates DAG-blockchain and modern cryptography technology to ensure security and scalability during performing scheduling and completing tradings. In this process, a constrained multi-item double auction problem is formulated because of the limited charging resources in a CS, which motivates EVs and CSs in this area to participate in the market based on their preferences and statuses. Due to this constraint, our problem is more complicated and harder to achieve truthfulness as well as system efficiency compared to the existing double auction model. To adapt to it, we propose two algorithms, namely Truthful Mechanism for Charging (TMC) and Efficient Mechanism for Charging (EMC), to determine an assignment between EVs and CSs and pricing strategies. Then, both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show the correctness and effectiveness of our proposed algorithms.
This paper explores a future perspective to foster the provision of balancing services to the electricity grid by distributed assets. One recent test case, initiated by the Dutch Transmission System Operator (TSO), was to operate an Electric Vehicle (EV) fleet on the automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR) market, which entails fast and automated reserves. To achieve that in a decentralised, automated and transparent manner, the role of blockchain technology for this specific application is explored. We propose a novel configuration that can serve as a basis for deploying distributed assets for aFRR markets using blockchain or any alternative Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Automation can be achieved via the deployment of smart contracts, which also results in transparency in the system. The blockchain configurations are designed for three phases in the aFRR market, namely: (i) Operational planning and scheduling by a balancing service provider (i.e., formulation and submission of aFRR bid), (ii) Real-time operations (i.e., activation and measurements), and (iii) Verification and settlement (i.e., imbalance correction and financial settlement). The paper concludes that the scalability of distributed assets that can participate in the system, combined with the large transaction times and energy consumption of some consensus mechanisms, could put limitations on the proposed architecture. Future research should address benchmarking studies of other alternatives (e.g., DLTs, such as the ones based on directed acyclic graphs, and non-DLT solutions) with the proposed blockchain solution.
The deep penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) into the transportation section and the associated charging management has yielded a critical issue, namely, how to efficiently store the generated charging records. In this article, we investigate the cost-efficient charging-record storage scheme by exploiting blockchain (BC). Accounting for the operational cost due to the consensus process via the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) protocol, we model the associated cost for storing the charging records via an ideal multiblockchain system and formulate a joint optimization of the storage selection (i.e., either storing the charging record locally or selecting one of the BCs for storing the charging record) and server-node allocation for each BC, with the objective of minimizing a systemwise cost. Despite the nature of the complicated mixed binary and integer programming problem, we exploit the decomposition structure and propose a layered algorithm (i.e., the bottom subproblem for determining the optimal storage selection and the top problem for finding the server-node allocation) to solve it. For the bottom subproblem, we exploit the nature of minimum weighted matching of the problem and propose a distributed auction-based algorithm for computing the optimal storage selection. With the optimal solution from the subproblem, we further propose an annealing-based algorithm to determine the server-node allocation for each BC. Numerical results are provided to validate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms and the performance of our cost-efficient charging-record storage scheme via BC.
Jacob G. Monroe, Paula Hansen, Matthew Sorell, Emily Zechman Berglund
The transfer of market power in electric generation from utilities to end-users spurred by the diffusion of distributed energy resources necessitates a new system of settlement in the electricity business that can better manage generation assets at the grid-edge. A new concept in facilitating distributed generation is peer-to-peer energy trading, where households exchange excess power with neighbors at a price they set themselves. However, little is known about the effects of peer-to-peer energy trading on the sociotechnical dynamics of electric power systems. Further, given the novelty of the concept, there are knowledge gaps regarding the impact of alternative electricity market structures and individual decision strategies on neighborhood exchanges and market outcomes. This study develops an empirical agent-based modeling (ABM) framework to simulate peer-to-peer electricity trades in a decentralized residential energy market. The framework is applied for a case study in Perth, Western Australia, where a blockchain-enabled energy trading platform was trialed among 18 households, which acted as prosumers or consumers. The ABM is applied for a set of alternative electricity market structures. Results assess the impact of solar generation forecasting approaches, battery energy storage, and ratio of prosumers to consumers on the dynamics of peer-to-peer energy trading systems. Designing an efficient, equitable, and sustainable future energy system hinges on the recognition of trade-offs on and across, social, technological, economic, and environmental levels. Results demonstrate that the ABM can be applied to manage emerging uncertainties by facilitating the testing and development of management strategies.
As subsidised feed-in-tariffs for distributed photovoltaic generation are reduced or abolished in many jurisdictions, there is growing interest in increasing self-consumption to realise greater value from rooftop PV generation. This paper proposes a blockchain based incentive mechanism for nonsumer communities with a centralized aggregator approach with the objective of increasing collective self-consumption and reduce peak demand. The incentive is implemented on a permissioned blockchain infrastructure, where generations and consumptions values are stored to the immutable ledger and smart contracts are used to implement the rewards calculation. In order to illustrate the developed incentive, the paper applies the method to four dwellings located in the south of Italy.
Uzma Amin, M. J. Hossain, Wayes Tushar, Khizir Mahmud
Emerging smart grid technologies and increased penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) direct the power sector to focus on RESs as an alternative to meet both baseload and peak load demands in a cost-efficient way. A key issue in such schemes is the design and analysis of energy trading techniques involving complex interactions between an aggregator and multiple electricity suppliers (ESs) with RESs fulfilling a certain demand. This is challenging because ESs can be of various categories, such as small/medium/large scale, and they are self-interested and generally have different preferences toward trading based on their types and constraints. This article introduces a new contract theoretic framework to tackle this challenge by designing optimal contracts for ESs. To this end, a dynamic pricing scheme is developed such that the aggregator can utilize to incentivize the ESs to contribute to both baseload and peak load demands according to their categories. An algorithm is proposed that can be implemented in a distributed manner by trading partners to enable energy trading. It is shown that the trading strategy under a baseload scenario is feasible, and the aggregator only needs to consider the per unit generation cost of ESs to decide on its strategy. The trading strategy for a peak load scenario, however, is complex and requires consideration of different factors, such as variations in the wholesale price and its effect on the selling price of ESs, and the uncertainty of energy generation from RESs. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme for energy trading in the local electricity market.
A distributed charging system based on the Internet of Things can provide important supports to ensure the safe and sustainable operation of electric vehicles (EVs). Usually, drivers prefer to use local charging piles by querying the remote cloud server. Frequent communication with the cloud server will not only produce an unnecessary communication overhead but also increase the latency of response. More seriously, the cloud-based centralized management mode is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which usually leads to privacy leakage. However, previous studies seldom focus on the privacy issue of the charging system for EVs. In this article, a decentralized and privacy-preserving charging scheme for EVs is proposed, which is based on blockchain and fog computing. In this scheme, fog computing is introduced to provide local computing with low latency. Specifically, a fog computing network, which is composed of fog computing nodes (FCNs), is used to provide localized services. Besides, a flexible consortium blockchain architecture is proposed. The blockchain system is deployed on the distributed FCNs, providing a decentralized and secure storage environment. By combining mutual authentication, smart contract, and blockchain-based storage, the security of privacy in the charging process can be ensured. The theoretical analysis and experiments demonstrate the advantages of the proposed scheme.
Sub-Saharan Africa requires affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity to boost its economic, social, and human development. The main challenge posed to the region's electricity sector is the large investment gap needed to finance new power projects. The employment of new and innovative financing options is required to bridge this investment gap. Independent power projects have become one of the fastest-growing sources of new finance in the region. However, their development is constrained by the limited availability of debt finance for project implementation. The limited capital and bureaucratic burden of traditional financial institutions coupled with the high risks in the region ensures that the debt finance required by independent power projects is raised only after an arduous voyage and at high interest rates. We address these challenges by proposing a novel decentralized finance instrument, a blockchain special purpose vehicle that streamlines the processes in the financial layer of a traditional special purpose vehicle -- finance mobilization, revenue collection, and revenue disbursal. Specifically, the proposed decentralized finance instrument facilitates the mobilization of finance for the special purpose vehicle from a location-independent crowd, revenue collection from the electricity offtaker in a risk-mitigated manner, and disbursal of eventual project revenues to investors.