While blockchain and distributed ledger technology offer immense potential for applications in transparency, security, efficiency, censorship resistance, and more, they have been criticized due to the energy-intensive nature of the proof of work consensus algorithm, particularly in the context of Bitcoin mining. We systematically explore the state-of-the-art regarding the relationship between Bitcoin mining and grid decarbonization. We specifically focus on the role of flexible load response through proof of work mining as a potential contributor to renewable energy penetration and net decarbonization of the energy grid. The existing literature has not comprehensively examined this area, leading to conflicting views. We address the gap, analyzing the capabilities and limitations of Bitcoin mining in providing flexible load response services. Our findings show that renewable-based mining could potentially drive a net-decarbonizing effect on energy grids, although key adaptations in mining practices are needed to fully realize this potential. Overall, the paper suggests a re-evaluation of the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining, highlighting its potential role as a facilitator for renewable energy expansion, and decarbonization more broadly.
Ayushi Sharma, Pratham Sharma, Harsh Bamotra, Vibha Gaur
A nation cannot sustain a highly productive and efficient population without smart cities. Due to their significant reliance on digital technologies, these cities require a high level of cybercrime protection. Cryptocurrencies have gained significant attention due to their secure and reliable infrastructure. The decentralised cryptocurrency operates in a trust-less environment known as the blockchain, where each network participant has a ledger copy of all transactions. Blockchain technology employs a proven consensus mechanism without requiring establishment of a central authority. But the consensus mechanism requires miner to solve a cryptographic problem by generating random hashes until one of them matches the desired one. This procedure is energy-intensive, and when thousands of miners repeat it to verify a single transaction, a substantial amount of electricity is consumed. Moreover, electricity produces a significant amount of carbon footprint. Patch methodology utilises the data of all hashes created per year and the efficiency of mining hardware over a 10-year period to calculate the Bitcoins energy consumption. Due to a large number of unknown and uncertain factors involved, it is difficult to precisely calculate a single value for electricity consumption and carbon footprint as reported by Patch methodology. The proposed method extends the Patch methodology by adding a maximum and minimum limit to the hardware efficiency as well as the sources of power generation, which can help refine estimates of electricity consumption and carbon emissions for a more accurate picture. Using the proposed methodology, it was estimated that Bitcoin consumed between 38.495 and 120.72 terawatt hours of electricity in 2021 and released between 2.12 and 45.37 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. To address the issue of excessive energy consumption and carbon emissions, a significant number of individual miners and mining pools are relocating to energy-intensive regions, such as aluminium mining sites that rely on hydroelectricity for energy generation.
Renewable energy sources (RES) and electric vehicles (EVs) are widely recognized as primary ways to reduce carbon emissions and essential components of low-carbon power systems. However, both of them have strong uncertainties which bring great challenges to power transactions and the operation of power grids. This paper defines the uncertainty cost of wind power producer(WPP) in day-ahead(DA) market pricing based on information entropy theory for the first time and proposes a EV charging management strategy with DA contract. The constructed low-carbon emission electricity market(LCEM) quantifies the uncertainty cost and contracts the disordered charging of EVs. It reduces the uncertainty and ensures the balance of power supply and demand. In addition, the transaction between WPP and EVs is described as the Stackelberg game, and its communication network is constructed through a blockchain network to ensure transaction efficiency and privacy security. Experiments show that LCEM can accurately measure the uncertainty of wind power generation, increase the net profit for WPP by more than 2% when the prediction error is greater than 10%, and adopt EV contract charging management in the DA market to minimize charging costs.
In order to promote the value circulation of energy resources and improve energy efficiency, credible energy sharing between Internet of Things Devices (IoTDs) came into being. However, sometimes IoTDs do not obtain the required energy in the required time period, resulting in less active participation in energy sharing. To address these challenges, this paper first proposes a credible energy transaction model based on the distributed ledger blockchain at the Edge of the Internet of Things, where the Edge Cloud Server (ECS) can collect a large number of surplus energy resources of IoTDs in a secure and credible energy sharing environment and share them with other IoTDs in urgent need of charging. Meanwhile, in order to attract IoTDs to participate in energy sharing for a long time and meet the energy demand of ECS to the maximum extent, a smart contract-based Expected Social Welfare Maximized double auction incentive mechanism of Single ECS to Multi-IoTDs (ESWM-StM) is proposed to enable dynamic and adaptive energy sharing from multiple IoTDs to a single ECS. In addition, this paper compares the proposed algorithm with the benchmark method in terms of energy-sharing cost and long-term utility. The simulation results show that the proposed incentive mechanism can enable IoTDs to provide more surplus energy per unit cost to meet the energy demand of ECSs, and can sustainably attract more energy trading participants to enhance the expected social welfare in the long term.
Pavan Ramchandra Padghan, Arul Daniel Samuel, Raja Pitchaimuthu
With the liberalization of the Electricity Market (EM), a secure demand response program (DRP) for real-time decisions is needed to enhance the effectiveness, stability, and security of the EM. Customers play a crucial role in DRP as they can offer flexibility when the market demands it. Nevertheless, the aggregator does not fully understand the customer’s available DR capacity to accurately bid on market transactions. To do so, the article presents a smart contract based on an optimal bidding strategy for an aggregator that considers customer receptiveness. First, we endeavor to determine the customer’s receptiveness concerning various incentives where the home energy management system (HEMS) introduces the employed load adjustment for electrical appliances. Second, the aggregator adopts a rational approach to employing the optimal day-ahead bidding strategy and scheduling for energy storage systems (ESS) to exploit economic benefits. The execution of Ethereum smart contracts in market transactions ensures transparency, security, and superior reliability. A test case with realistic data is presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed bidding strategy. The results confirm that the aggregator determines the optimal bidding value for the next day. An aggregator could generate a profit of $23 from the bidding strategy. The regional transmission system operator delivers 485 kWh of flexibility, of which consumers account for 60% and ESS for 40%, generating a profit of $40 per day. Prosumers selling electricity to the aggregator would make an average profit of $6 per day. Thus, the execution of DRP and a bidding strategy results in economic benefits for the aggregator and other entities in the EM.
Kevin P. Hallinan, Haoliang Lu, Rydge B. Mulford, Lauren Bower · 7 authors
Despite the climate commitments made by countries in the Paris Climate Agreement adopted in 2015 and reinforced during COP 21 and with notably less success during COP 22, world carbon emissions increased in both 2021 and 2022. It is increasingly unlikely that the world will achieve the targeted 50% carbon reduction by 2030, the reduction approximately needed for reducing global temperature rise since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to less than 1.5 deg. C. At the same time, there remain nearly 2 billion people in the world who have no or highly unreliable access to power. In developed countries, access to both clean energy and energy efficiency investment in residences within low to moderate income communities has also lagged. This paper provides a review of the “Productive Use of Energy (PUE)”, which is a means to add value to solar energy mini- and micro-grids to ensure investment worthiness and add more value to the communities being served. In this context, it posits an opportunity to leverage Bitcoin mining as a common PUE strategy applicable to new solar installations. Several actual pilot cases are described to demonstrate this potential throughout the world and at multiple scales. These include: (i) existing micro-grids with significant stranded energy to generate income that could be used to reduce the cost per kWh for the community; (ii) new solar micro-grids optimized to meet community load and mining operations; (iii) dedicated solar-powered Bitcoin mining mini-grids developed solely to create a funding stream for self-investment by communities for their benefit; and (iv) a low-income residential solar-powered Bitcoin miner to reduce the energy cost burden for residents. Several of these scenarios show significant potential to aid investment worthiness.
Traditional power grids have been the major source of electricity for several households and industries for a number of years. However, with that kind of supply, every member of the grid is affected whenever there is a fault on the transmission line connecting them. With that in mind, microgrids, usually powered by numerous distributed electrical sources, were introduced to curb this problem, and as such, energy users have also become producers themselves. Nonetheless, the generation of power by distributed sources brings about unpredictability on the network and, in essence, problems in energy sharing. Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has several advantages and has been introduced to mitigate energy sharing problems. With networked energy trading comes the issue of trust, as several prosumers are concerned about their privacy and security in such environments. Therefore, this work leverages the advantages of blockchain in proposing a secure energy trading platform for all parties involved. Coupled with certificateless signcryption, an immutable energy trading market is designed, and its use case is applicable in smart cities. A thorough security analysis was performed, and the efficiency of our proposed solution is backed by numerical results.
Ümit Cali, Ugur Halden, Murat Kuzlu, Marco Pasetti · 8 authors
Power systems are evolving rapidly with the integration and active use of emerging digitalization technologies, including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain / Distributed Ledger Technology (B/DLT), and other Information and Communication Technologies. Besides the active integration of digitalization technologies into modern power systems, decarbonization efforts are also shaping the energy transition process to be further demystified under the Digital Green Shift convention in a joint manner. B/DLT appears to be one of the most promising enabling technologies to realize the full energy transition toward next-generation power markets and systems. Standardization of such technologies is playing a critical role in the rapid adoption of emerging technologies. This article aims to reflect the industrial and academic perspectives of practical approaches of B/DLT in the Energy Domain and the potential contributions of the proposed scope in terms of climate change and sustainability aspects.
Tao Zhang, Jianhua Yang, Kaiyuan Jin, Tianjun Jing
Abstract With the increasing penetration of distributed photovoltaic generation (DPVG) in the rural distribution network, some problems such as abandoning solar energy and increasing voltage fluctuation have become more and more prominent. In order to promote local or nearby power consumption of the photovoltaic (PV) generation in the distribution network, the profit strategy is given with an optimal electricity price based on blockchain technology (BCT) by considering the topology, the load fluctuation of the distribution network and the reputation value of agricultural park consumers. The electricity price in the blockchain (BC) transaction is used as an intermediate variable to establish the revenue model for the PV generation, the agricultural park consumers and the distribution network. The power trading mechanism of the PV generation is constructed in the decentralized management agency of the BC. The maximum overall comprehensive income of the PV generation and the park consumers is used as the objective function, and the Stackelberg game theory is applied to prove the existence of the optimal game strategy in the transaction. The local power consumption method of the PV generation is simulated with the optimal electricity price in the IEEE 33‐node distribution network. The problem of abandoning solar energy is effectively relieved within an appropriate voltage limitation, and the comprehensive benefit of the PV generation and the park consumers is raised in the distribution network.
Bozhi Wang, Jinfei Xu, Ke Jin, C. L. Philip Chen · 9 authors
With the spread of distributed renewable energy, residents are shifting from being mere consumers to being energy producers and consumers. This role shift poses challenges to the electricity trading mechanism that connects distributed renewable energy sources to the grid. In this paper, a new efficient and secure blockchain-based distributed community energy trading mechanism is proposed, called CE-SDT. Our system is proved to be stable and scalable. It can also help shift loads and power peaks and reduce customer costs by 60%. As a result, our proposed blockchain-based trading mechanism, as compared to the centralized trading mechanism, is applied to microgrids formed by distributed renewable energy sources, not only obtaining greater economic benefits but also reducing the carbon footprint of residents, and furthermore, it promotes low or zero-carbon configurations of the power system, thereby achieving certain environmental benefits.
Energy is a major driver of human activity. Demand response is of the utmost importance to maintain the efficient and reliable operation of smart grid systems. The short-term load forecasting (STLF) method is particularly significant for electric fields in the trade of energy. This model has several applications to everyday operations of electric utilities, namely load switching, energy-generation planning, contract evaluation, energy purchasing, and infrastructure maintenance. A considerable number of STLF algorithms have introduced a tradeoff between convergence rate and forecast accuracy. This study presents a new wild horse optimization method with a deep learning-based STLF scheme (WHODL-STLFS) for SGs. The presented WHODL-STLFS technique was initially used for the design of a WHO algorithm for the optimal selection of features from the electricity data. In addition, attention-based long short-term memory (ALSTM) was exploited for learning the energy consumption behaviors to forecast the load. Finally, an artificial algae optimization (AAO) algorithm was applied as the hyperparameter optimizer of the ALSTM model. The experimental validation process was carried out on an FE grid and a Dayton grid and the obtained results indicated that the WHODL-STLFS technique achieved accurate load-prediction performance in SGs.
Abstract This research presents a decentralised incentive‐based demand response (DR) program using blockchain technology. Consumers self‐report baseline to the system operator (SO), the smart contract confirms the validity of the data to execute transactions and finally the validators record the information on the blockchain network. During the DR event, a set of consumers are randomly selected to deliver the required load reduction. The signalled consumer who delivers the load reduction is rewarded, and the non‐called consumers who diverge from their reported baseline are penalised. The randomness of choosing the consumers and penalty function restrict the baseline inflation. Here, we create a blockchain network and deploy a smart contract on the Ethereum build platform. A DR event scenario is adopted with residential houses data sets, all consumers report their baseline information to the SO through the Internet and smart meter. The SO calls four users to deliver the essential load reduction according to the probability of choosing a consumer. The smart contract verifies the received information to start transaction execution. We use proof of authority mechanism to select validation nodes from the participants using voting system. They validate each block before adding it to the blockchain. Last, the monetary transactions settle in participants' wallets. Our results confirm that decentralised systems like blockchain can significantly improve transparency, openness, and customer participation in the DR program. Also contributes to the security and privacy of user information with a minimal investment in new infrastructure.
There is an increasing number of end-users that are moving from just consumers of electricity in their households to participate in other type of consumption, such as Electrical Vehicles ("EV"), and to produce electricity, on their roofs for example, even the EV chargers can inject electricity to the grid. That is the evolution of the consumers to prosumers: production + consumption. This document will only focus on one type of energy, electricity. However, most of the applications should be thought for any other type of energy. Such platform would generate transactions in real-time allowing individual and aggregate transactions to be made by users, generating new business opportunities. These transactions could be between end-users and the grid, in any direction, thus generating millions of transactions in many directions. To handle that, this document proposes a distributed platform that uses smart contracts that can be trustworthy, scalable, and flexible to allow the users to share energy with others and make secure transactions. The platform would generate instantly and locally without the need of a centralized server, with the use of the blockchain technology. For billing purposes, transactions can be grouped and aggregated on monthly basis. It is a requirement to ensure communication of all participating users. In the power market nowadays, these users do not perform any operations in their metering equipment, but simply read, record, and serve information. It will be necessary to ensure that they can offer that capacity in the desired granularity. The inclusion of machine learning to the system will provide the capability of analyzing the enormous amount of data that will be generated and exchanges every minute. Smart contracts and distributed ledgers technologies offer a solution for these challenges providing security to the transactions at a lower cost than a centralized system. In a distributed platform the necessary investment is smaller.
Predicting future demand for distributed energy sources is difficult because of the energy generations is unpredictability. We proposed an auto executable blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy transaction market with Long ShortTerm Memory (LSTM) neural network for energy trading and predictions. Our proposed energy transaction market and trading strategy are built via smart contracts inside the blockchain. The energy trading process in the market is auto executable and does not need a long waiting time as in the conventional bidding strategy. LSTM is integrated into the market for predicting future energy usage. Experimental results show that the proposed blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy transaction market can earn more profit than the traditional method.
Nihar Ranjan Pradhan, Akhilendra Pratap Singh, S. Sudha, K. Hemanth Kumar Reddy · 5 authors
With the electric power grid experiencing a rapid shift to the smart grid paradigm over a deregulated energy market, Internet of Things (IoT)-based solutions are gaining prominence, and innovative peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading at a micro level is being deployed. Such advancement, however, leaves traditional security models vulnerable and paves the path for blockchain, a distributed ledger technology (DLT), with its decentralized, open, and transparency characteristics as a viable alternative. However, due to deregulation in energy trading markets, most of the prototype resilience regarding cybersecurity attack, performance and scalability of transaction broadcasting, and its direct impact on overall performances and attacks are required to be supported, which becomes a performance bottleneck with existing blockchain solutions such as Hyperledger, Ethereum, and so on. In this paper, we design a novel permissioned Corda framework for P2P energy trading peers that not only mitigates a new class of cyberattacks, i.e., delay trading (or discard), but also disseminates the transactions in a optimized propagation time, resulting in a fair transaction distribution. Sharing transactions in a permissioned R3 Corda blockchain framework is handled by the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and transport layer security (TLS). The unique contribution of this paper lies in the use of an optimized CPU and JVM heap memory scenario analysis with P2P metric in addition to a far more realistic multihosted testbed for the performance analysis. The average latencies measured are 22 ms and 51 ms for sending and receiving messages. We compare the throughput by varying different types of flow such as energy request, request + pay, transfer, multiple notary, sender, receiver, and single notary. In the proposed framework, request is an energy asset that is based on payment state and contract in the P2P energy trading module, so in request flow, only one node with no notary appears on the vault of the node.Energy request + pay flow interaction deals with two nodes, such as producer and consumer, to deal with request and transfer of asset ownership with the help of a notary. Request + repeated pay flow request, on node A and repeatedly transfers a fraction of energy asset state to another node, B, through a notary.
Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan
Renewable energy resources have been gaining ground in recent years and we are on the verge of a decentralized energy market with consumers becoming prosumers. Platforms that facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) sale or purchase of energy are therefore essential. This paper presents a way to trade energy across P2P networks using blockchain technology. The main server is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (Pi4B), on which the user interface (UI) as well as the private Ethereum blockchain are configured. The blockchain also implements a smart contract. For the purpose of developing the UI that provides assistance in conducting trading activities, an open-source Angular framework is used. Also explored in the study is the development of an Internet of Things (IoT) server using the latest ESP32-S3 microcontroller. The field instrumentation devices (FIDs) are connected to the microcontroller for the purpose of data acquisition and for subsequent transmission to an IoT server. The blockchain network maintains a record of all transactions in an immutable manner. Assuring security is achieved through a local configuration of the system, hosted on a private network with restricted access. For the purposes of information security and data integrity, additional security measures are also considered, such as a secret recovery phrase, firewalls, login credentials and private key. Among the servers and clients, there is an implementation of a Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The P2P energy trading approach involving renewable energy designed for remote communities is explained and illustrated in this paper.
Mingxing Guo, Ke Zhang, Su Wang, Jinlei Xia · 7 authors
Traditional centralized transactions require a control center for user demand matching, settlement and other processes. However, with the increase in the penetration rate of distributed energy in the community, the explosive increase in the number of transactions leads to a decrease in efficiency and it is difficult to guarantee user privacy and information security. The smart contract technology based on blockchain technology has the characteristics of decentralization, traceability and tamper resistance, and these key factors show unique advantages in distributed energy transactions. This paper explores Ethereum and smart contract technology, designs a peer-to-peer energy sharing mechanism with reward and punishment incentives and establishes a smart contract trading platform for smart community-based virtual power plant (CVPP). This paper verifies the functionality and effectiveness of smart contract. The results show that when the supply and demand ratio changes, the user can conduct energy transactions according to the contract without a third-party organization, which solves the problem of trust between the two parties and achieves the expected effect and runs successfully. In addition, the simulation results show that the peer-to-peer transaction based on smart contracts reduces the energy cost per household and increases the total benefit of CVPP.
Developments such as the increasing electrical energy demand, growth of renewable energy sources, cyber–physical security threats, increased penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), and unpredictable behavior of prosumers and EV users pose a range of challenges to the electric power system. To address these challenges, a decentralized system using blockchain technology and machine learning techniques for secure communication, distributed energy management and decentralized energy trading between prosumers is required. Blockchain enables secure distributed trust platforms, addresses optimization and reliability challenges, and allows P2P distributed energy exchange as well as flexibility services between customers. On the other hand, machine learning techniques enable intelligent smart grid operations by using prediction models and big data analysis. Motivated from these facts, in this review, we examine the potential of combining blockchain technology and machine learning techniques in the development of smart grid and investigate the benefits achieved by using both techniques for the future smart grid scenario. Further, we discuss research challenges and future research directions of applying blockchain and machine learning techniques for smart grids both individually as well as combining them together. The identified areas that require significant research are demand management in power grids, improving the security of grids with better consensus mechanisms, electric vehicle charging systems, scheduling of the entire grid system, designing secure microgrids, and the interconnection of different blockchain networks.
A flexible and adaptable market procurement of reactive power has the potential to improve network efficiency, voltage stability, and operational costs. In Europe, such a dynamic procurement must be in accordance with the European Union directive EU 2019/944 on non-frequency ancillary services. In accordance with this situation, a blockchain-based framework of market procurement of reactive power is proposed and presented in this paper. The devised framework is in alignment with the European Union’s directive to establish a non-discriminatory, transparent, and free market. Moreover, the blockchain-based framework is applicable at all network levels and allows for the variety of different distributed resources to participate. A two-layer blockchain topology is proposed to overcome scalability and transaction time issues. The first main-layer blockchain acts as the agent for trust and guarantees the immutability of data as well as the remuneration of participating market players. The second-layer blockchain facilitates direct access to tendering processes or auctions, fast transactions, and low transaction fees for involved stakeholders. Additionally, a decentralized oracle network is proposed to integrate external data into the second-layer blockchain. Data required for verifying the physical reactive power transactions are delivered by smart meters. The entire procurement process is automated by deploying smart contracts at the various blockchain layers. Thus, in principle, the involved stakeholders are the system operators and market players. For the purpose of validation, the holistic market procurement process is demonstrated and analyzed in a hardware-in-the-loop environment involving reactive power procurement at the distribution network level.