Oussama Laayati, Hicham El Hadraoui, Mostafa Bouzi, Ali El-Alaoui · 6 authors
Smart energy management systems have shown lately efficient solutions to optimize the energy consumption, maximize the energy productions, predict the demand response, and grid self-diagnosis. These systems give insights on energy behaviour within the electrical power grid, where the consumers and producers can have real-time key performance indicators related to the energy that help them to take decisions in order to optimize their consumption. The management of loads and sources is a critical component of the mentioned systems especially when it comes to decentralized energy production within the grid, which create a huge energy market, where prosumers can buy and sell green energy interfacing with a certified agency that approve these transactions. The goal of this paper is to de-sign a blockchain base energy management system which enable a peer-to-peer energy market, the key element of this design is the power meters and their inter-actions with the electrical grid not only as measurement devices but also as digital wallet, that enable the prosumers to sell and buy energy. This concept integrates all blockchain components including cybersecurity, bidding techniques and welfare optimization. A simulation of these optimization techniques, hashing algorithms and their interactions with the smart meters to generate smart contracts and to increase security according to the blockchain concept were proposed.
R. G. Jahn, Oliver Kraft, Marcel Klaes, Dennis Schmid · 6 authors
As power systems continuously become increasingly volatile and complex systems, conventional market designs turn inefficient, unnecessarily exclusive, and also agnostic towards grid and system capacities. While partial solutions to this already exist, the emerging distributed ledger technologies open up the field to holistic solutions. This work outlines the shortcomings of nowadays market designs, provides a conceptual design improvement along with its technical requirements and finally presents a high-level implementation based on IBMâs blockchain project Hyperledger Fabric.
Michell Boerger, Philipp LĂ€mmel, Nikolay Tcholtchev, Manfred Hauswirth
Climate change has put significant pressure on energy markets. Political decisions such as the plan of the German government to shut down coal power plants by 2038 are shifting electricity production towards renewable and distributed energy resources. The share of these resources will continue to grow significantly in the coming years. This trend changes the ways how energy markets work which mandates fundamental changes in the underlying IT infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution which enables an economically viable and grid-serving integration of distributed energy resources into the existing energy system. Our blockchain-based approach targets intraday and day-ahead operating reserve markets, on which energy grid operators and operators of distributed energy resources can trade flexibilities within the schedulable energy production and consumption of their resources. By utilizing these flexibilities as an operating reserve, renewable and climate-friendly technologies can contribute to maintaining the grid stability and security of supply while simultaneously creating economically interesting business models for their operators. We propose to define blockchain-based short-term energy markets by utilizing the concept of general-purpose smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. This enables direct and decentralized trading of energy flexibilities without any intermediary or central instance. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through an implementation of a prototype of the proposed markets based on the Ethereum blockchain and provide a detailed evaluation of its efficiency and scalability.
Abstract Large penetration of various types of distributed energy resources and new requirements in electricity markets, have facilitated creation of sophisticated distributed energy resource aggregation systems for providing grid services. Aggregators such as Virtual Power Plants enable participation of smallâ and mediumâscale distributed energy resources in electricity markets, interacting with grid operators to collectively provide ancillary power and energy services. These interactions between grid operator, Virtual Power Plants operator and distributed energy resources are complex both in terms of contractual agreements and provision of services. On all layers, accurate tracking of distributed energy resource usage and execution of contracts is required for establishing trust between transacting participants. Digitalisation and automation of processes such as control of distributed energy resources, verification and payouts for services will add value for solving complexity of dealing with multiple parties in a Virtual Power Plants aggregation model. The authors present a blockchainâintegrated Virtual Power Plants system that enables full automation of distributed energy resource controls through smart contracts, digital trust between participants and immediate payouts for services. Effectiveness of the developed blockchain mechanism is demonstrated on a pilot Virtual Power Plants system comprising distributed energy storage systems, renewables, EV charging stations and loads with a total size of 1.8 MWs. Additionally, we propose a new mechanism for managing renewable energy curtailments through blockchain.
The decentralization of power generation driven by the rise in the adoption of distributed energy resources paves the way for a new paradigm in grid operations. P2P energy trading is beneficial to the grid as well as the connected peers. A blockchain-based smart contract is well suited to transparently facilitate trades between energy consumers and producers without the services of intermediaries. In this paper, Ethereum-based smart contracts that facilitate double energy auction and spinning reserve trading are developed with Solidity, compiled, and deployed within the Remix IDE. Willing energy sellers/buyers submit offers/bids to a contract that implements the double auction procedure. In order to fulfil energy supply obligations, sellers are also able to purchase spinning reserves via another smart contract. The smart contractsâ effectiveness in performing the auction procedure and making payments is confirmed using an energy/reserve market scenario. The proposed scheme encourages further adoption of distributed energy resources and participation in local P2P energy trading.
With the rapid development of distributed energy, traditional power consumers have been transformed into prosumers who both produce and consume power, and are able to conduct flexible peer-to-peer transactions. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology suitable for peer-to-peer transactions. However, the single-chain blockchain cannot simultaneously support the network security check and decentralized power transactions. Therefore, a double-chain blockchain and the corresponding peer-to-peer transaction model are proposed with the reorganization of the transaction chain and power chain. The peer-to-peer independent decision-making transactions are achieved through the transaction chain (public chain) to maximize the prosumer's economic interests. The security check and adjusted transaction scheme are achieved through the power chain (alliance chain) with the power network constraint. Based on the Ethereum blockchain development platform, simulations of peer-to-peer transactions in the IEEE 14-node distribution network are implemented. The simulation results show that the designed double-chain blockchain has higher transaction processing efficiency than the single-chain blockchain. The secure and autonomous peer-to-peer transaction of prosumers can be well supported by the proposed method.
Abstract Blockchain technology has been recognised as a promising technology for supporting PeerâtoâPeer (P2P) energy tradingâan emerging paradigm in which energy trading is performed directly between end energy customers. The stateâofâtheâart blockchain designs for P2P energy trading can only support less computeâintensive energy trading tasks and/or rely on the set up of a long challenge time to ensure correctness of transactions, which restricts the systems' scalability and applicability in the diverse P2P energy trading applications. This paper proposes a new dualâblockchain system for P2P energy trading. The system consists of a primary blockchain and a secondary blockchain. The primary blockchain is mainly responsible for storing the data of P2P energy trading transactions while the computeâintensive tasks (e.g. pricing and transaction verification) are executed in the secondary blockchain. An Improved Optimistic Rollup (IOR) mechanism is proposed to facilitate the coâoperation of the dual blockchains. Through a specific âexecutorâvalidatorâ mechanism and a group of specific smart contracts with different functions, the IOR mechanism can effectively accommodate the dual blockchains to execute the P2P energy trading transactions in a computational efficient manner while ensuring the correctness and security of the transactions. A prototype of the proposed system is implemented on Fisco Bcos and Alibaba Cloud and comprehensive simulations are conducted to validate the proposed system.
The traditional energy resources are not able to suffice present requirements. Renewable energy resources, efficient management of the energy, saving distribution cost of energy, and cheaper availability of energy to end-users are some of the crucial issues in energy supply and management today. The distributed- network concept of Blockchain technology is having capability to modernize the energy generation and distribution sector. The energy industry is consistently catalyzed by innovations including rooftop solar, electric vehicles, communication among energy devices, smart metering, and energy cryptocurrency. Distributed ledger technology of Blockchain has more possibilities to expand the efficiencies for utility providers by finding the owners of grid materials. Blockchain offers exclusive solutions for renewable energy supply in addition to origin tracking. Blockchain technology is getting popular in many use cases around the world, which includes new representations with blockchain for energy marketplaces, real-time data management, renewable energy certificates, and moving carbon credits. Combined efforts from technology developers in energy supply fields, academicians, financial institutions, and government sectors to coordinate Blockchain with the energy sector is one of the smartest and spectacular technology innovations in recent times. The blockchain energy schemes are designing peer-to-peer energy markets. A peer-to-peer energy market is a distributed network of people who sell and buy surplus energy from other contributors. These energy markets help the common people by reducing control from traditional wholesale entities. This energy management is usually done with the help of Microgrids, also known as Smartgrids. End users can access prepaid energy, which can be done by easy mobile transactions. Many companies have connected communities to each other for creating Microgrids and visualize a bright future with entirely distributed peer-to-peer grids. The main advantages of Blockchain in the energy segment are cost reduction, environmental sustainability, more security, and transparency for stakeholders with the benefit of not compromising privacy. This work discusses the concept of Blockchain technology in brief, features of the Microgrid or Smartgrid, some useful use cases of energy Blockchain and benefits of application of Blockchain technology to Smartgrid operations in the following sections.
Md Mahraj Murshalin Al Moti, Rafsan Shartaj Uddin, Md. Abdul Hai, Tanzim Bin Saleh · 7 authors
A smart grid is an intelligent electricity network that allows efficient electricity distribution from the source to consumers through telecommunication technology. The legacy smart grid follows the centralized oligopoly marketplace for electricity trading. This research proposes a blockchain-based electricity marketplace for the smart grid environment to introduce a decentralized ledger in the electricity market for enabling trust and traceability among the stakeholders. The electricity prices in the smart grid are dynamic in nature. Therefore, price forecasting in smart grids has paramount importance for the service providers to ensure service level agreement and also to maximize profit. This research introduced a Stackelberg model-based dynamic retail price forecasting of electricity in a smart grid. The Stackelberg model considered two-stage pricing between electricity producers to retailers and retailers to customers. To enable adaptive and dynamic price forecasting, reinforcement learning is used. Reinforcement learning provides an optimal price forecasting strategy through the online learning process. The use of blockchain will connect the service providers and consumers in a more secure transaction environment. It will help tackle the centralized systemâs vulnerability by performing transactions through customersâ smart contracts. Thus, the integration of blockchain will not only make the smart grid system more secure, but also price forecasting with reinforcement learning will make it more optimized and scalable.
Abstract Due to the growing number of Distributed Energy Resources and new electrical loads at the sectoral contact points, novel organisational forms such as Local Energy Markets arise to deal with increasing complexity in the energy system. However, these markets are radically different from traditional energy markets, as they often allow individual prosumers to trade with each other via a peerâtoâpeer scheme. To guarantee tamperâproof settlement, an increasing number of these markets feature a distributed ledger technology. This paper analyses different design variants of peerâtoâpeer markets, focusing specifically on the allocation mechanism under network constraints as these mechanisms constitute the core component of a market design. We assess these designs concerning user acceptance, economic performance, practicability, and their ability to relieve grid congestion. Further key performance indicators also cover communal revenues or welfare distribution. For this purpose, we developed an agentâbased simulation framework, which builds on data from three German reference municipalities derived from a novel clustering approach. Besides a consolidated presentation of the results, we highlight current implementation obstacles and identify promising concepts for further research.
In this paper, the analysis of peer-to-peer energy trading with smart contracts, which are applications run on blockchains, is presented. The software architecture and algorithm of the smart contracts that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine are mentioned. The smart contracts are applied transactions that guarantee the information of both parties in a peer-to-peer transmission and are verified by the logic structure that operates within itself and do not cause any vulnerabilities in the system. In addition, a software background with an instrument panel in the user interface and offering prices within the framework of the supply-demand relationship is presented. In addition to these, the paper aims to promote decentralisation by integrating renewable energy sources with the framework of peer-to-peer trading methods on a Blockchain.
Mikko Nykyri, Tommi J. KÀrkkÀinen, Saku Levikari, Samuli Honkapuro · 6 authors
Sharing local co-owned photovoltaic (PV) energy in multifamily residential buildings is inefficient. Energy produced and consumed within the same building may be considered purchased energy, of which the customer must pay the purchase price, the network service fee, and taxes. As PV typically does not allow self-sufficiency in the Nordic countries, a distribution system operator is needed to provide the grid connection. Earlier solutions to this problem are focused on energy communities where an energy aggregator is responsible for the energy balance settlement. However, this does not allow the energy community members to remain in the open electricity market. This paper introduces a blockchain-based balance settlement ledger and a set of rules for energy sharing in energy communities where members participate in the open electricity market while supplied with local low-cost PV energy. This, to the authorsâ knowledge, has not been previously implemented. The blockchain mitigates the need for any central entity for balance settlement and ensures fair sharing of PV energy. The existing smart meters can be used so no investments are required. The system performance is tested with simulations which show potential for increase in profitability. The self-sufficiency rate increases in our test scenario from 4.03% to 9.61%.
<p> Power systems are undergoing rapid transitions to incorporate renewable sources of generation and to combat climate change. Next stage of transitions will lead to a shift from large-scale, centralized systems to networks of smallsized, distributed electricity systems which require distributed or decentralized ledgers for database management for efficient transactions. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) are a form of decentralized ledgers where the transactions (energy, information and money) among various entities are maintained. One such DLT is blockchain technology which offers several advantages. Data recorded in blockchains are difficult to tamper with; have privacy protection; facilitate fast, accurate and real-time settlement of financial transactions. Contemporary research has started focusing on their possible applications in energy systems. State-of-the-art suggests that while business and market aspects have been extensively discussed, the electrical constraints and implementation methodologies have not been adequately addressed. Furthermore, all the reviewed projects have implemented only peer-to-peer transactions that are not scalable. To incorporate the new entities like prosumers, intermicrogrid transactions and interactions with the legacy power grid, new structural and operational frameworks are necessary. The proposed research explores the possibility of developing blockchain enabled smart microgrids (BSMG) with the above frameworks. It aims to build a conceptual framework of BSMG, including the transaction protocols and process flows. It proposes inclusion of network constraints in a three-levelled transaction setup which is executed over a four-layered architecture. Another practical challenge is that BSMGs may be set up on different blockchain platforms. Hence, this paper also proposes implementing Inter-Blockchain Protocol for the first time to include interoperability and communication between different platforms. Finally the performance metrics that will be used to validate the BSMGs are outlined. </p>
Ămit Cali, Murat Kuzlu, James Kempf, Shammya Shananda Saha · 6 authors
Integration of distributed energy resources (DES), especially renewable energy and storage resources, into the electrical power grid has introduced new challenges such as bidirectional power flow, distributed energy markets, trust between participants, etc. As a result, it is needed to share and trade energy among participants in a trusted environment for distributed markets, either as individuals or aggregators, by negotiating based on demand, price, time of day or others. Transactive Energy Systems (TESs) provide a unique environment to engage end participants and non-traditional resources to address the grid challenges, while Blockchains provide a unique technology to address the trust problem through the use of a distributed ledger, cryptocurrencies, and the execution of smart contracts. This study explores the automation features - commonly referred to as smart contracts - of blockchain technology. This paper also aims to reflect the international industrial, academic and entrepreneurial perspectives.
Modern power systems are evolving towards decarbonization and digitalization phases leading to Transactive Energy Systems (TES). Application of technology like Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to develop a TES is not an unheard topic of research. The joint operation of TES and DLT is providing various new opportunities and business models where smart contracts can play an enabler role to amalgamate interconnected systems like power systems and digital infrastructure and services. Furthermore, the current global environmental and political climate accentuates the need for clean energy sources combined with the need for deregulation, decentralization, decarbonization, digitalization, and democratization in the energy ecosystem. This work aims to demystify the potential of smart contracts as an enabler technology for the Digital Green Transition of the energy industry from a TES perspective. The work also explores how smart contracts can be used in various TES use cases. Furthermore, some insight into how policy, legal, and legislative requirements can impact the use of a smart contract for future energy grid is also provided.
In recent years, advancements in electric vehicle (EV) technology and rising petrol prices have increased the demand for EVs and also made them important for the Smart Grid (SG) economy. During the high energy demand, Vehicle to Grid (V2G) comprises a notable feature that returns the stored energy back to the grid. However, due to dynamic nature of energy prices and EVs availability, determining the best charging and discharging strategy is quite difficult. The existing approaches need a model to predict the uncertainty and optimize the scheduling problem. Further, other issues like security, scalability, and real-time data accessibility of EVs energy trading (ET) data at low cost also exist. Though many solutions exist, they are not adequate to handle the aforementioned issues. This paper proposes a Secure V2G-Energy Trading (SV2G-ET) scheme using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Ethereum Blockchain Technology (EBT). The proposed SV2G-ET scheme employs a deep Q-network for EVs scheduling for charging/discharging. SV2G-ET scheme uses InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and smart contract (SC) for secure access of EVâs ET data in real time. The experimental results prove the efficacy of the proposed SV2G-ET scheme that leads to improved scalability, saving the EVs charging cost, low ET data storage cost, and increased EV ownerâs profit.
As the backbone of the smart grid, smart metering systems enable customers, as well as utility companies, to have access to real-time information on consumption patterns in electricity, gas, and water. From a technical standpoint, smart metering systems (1) reduce the need to verify electricity, gas, and water consumption services, (2) allow for efficient management of electricity, gas, and water consumption patterns, and (3) protect natural resources. Additionally, smart metering systems provide a number of important functions that should be performed manually, such as automatic and remote measurement of electricity, gas, and water consumption, connect or disconnect service, tampering detection, outage identification and isolation, and collecting, aggregating, and analyzing real-time information of the fundamental parameters associated with customersâ services, i.e., voltage, current, etc. Besides, considering the number of customers, there are several limitations to accessing and sharing the data between utility companies and customers, and therefore, reliable and secure communication infrastructure is needed. To resolve such issues, a conceptual and technological Blockchain-based system is developed to securely share the real-time collected data from a set of various sensors for monitoring and control of electricity, gas, and water consumption, namely the multifunctional integrated smart metering system. The proposed system takes advantage of a decentralized structure, connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) nodes, data privacy, and transparency and auditability. The proposed Blockchain-based smart metering system allows customers to securely monitor their actual electricity, gas, and water consumption for a specific period of time and review the full history of consumption. This leads to finding solutions to rationalize the consumption of electricity, gas, and water resources.