Sergio Cantillo-Luna, Ricardo Moreno‐Chuquen, Harold R. Chamorro, Vijay K. Sood · 6 authors
Power grids all over the world are transitioning towards a decentralized structure. Under such a transition, blockchain technology is emerging as a potential solution for technical, deployment and decentralization issues, given its security, integrity, decentralized nature and required infrastructure. Moreover, blockchain technology offers excellent features like non-repudiation and immutability which makes it a promising application for DER integration and management on reliability factors. In this paper, a comprehensive review of blockchain applications for DER management and integration is presented. First, a blockchain-based literature review of research activities in the DER integration area and related tasks including entrepreneurial efforts is carried out. Next, the different opportunities and challenges of DER integration and management in power grids, i.e., centralization, regulatory support, development costs are discussed. Finally, some key research challenges and opportunities of including blockchain technology to DER integration and management issues are presented.
A well-known fact is that Bitcoin’s blockchain maintenance using proof-of-work mining consumes a lot of energy. This article explains how this energy expense is inherent to Bitcoin’s design whose purpose is to induce a truly distributed peer-to-peer currency ledger (the blockchain) that is nevertheless trustable.
A smart electric vehicle (EV) charging station energy management system (CSMS) based on blockchain technology, which aims to protect privacy of EV users, ensure fairness of power transactions, and meet charging demands for large numbers of EVs, is proposed in this study. EV charging pile is designed as a local blockchain distributed ledger node, which operates synchronously with blockchain system and blockchain distributed ledger in cloud server. This paper integrates CSMS through smart contracts, providing EV users that ability to conduct power transactions and perform optimal charging and discharging control in real-time. The distributed ledger is in charge of recording all the EV charging and discharging data to maintain fairness of power transactions, protects data from being maliciously tampered, and enables the EV user to monitor status of the EV participating in power transactions and dispatching. The intelligent CSMS consists of an artificial intelligence (AI) module, centralized optimal scheduling module, and decentralized optimal control module. The AI module is responsible for forecasting renewable energy generation and load consumption. There is a two-layer architecture consisting of centralized and decentralized optimal control modules; the upper layer performs optimal charging and discharging scheduling of the entire EV charging station at time 15-min time segments, the bottom layer performs distributed optimal scheduling control in each EV charging pile at 5 min time interval. Proposed system in this paper can deal with feeder congestion and real-time power supply and grid demand imbalance, which are caused by high numbers of EVs.
Francesco Buccafurri, Gianluca Lax, Lorenzo Musarella, Antonia Russo
The need for a flexible, dynamic, and decentralized energy market has rapidly grown in recent years. As a matter of fact, Industry 4.0 and Smart Grids are pursuing a path of automation of operations to insure all the steps among consumers and producers are getting closer. This leads towards solutions that exploit the paradigm of public blockchain, which represents the best platform to design flat and liquid markets for which providing trust and accountability to mutual interactions becomes crucial. On the other hand, one of the risks arising in this situation is that personal information is exposed to the network, with intolerable threats to privacy. In this paper, we propose a solution for energy trading, based on the blockchain Ethereum and Smart Contracts.The solution aims to be a concrete proposal to satisfy the needs of energy trading in smart grids, including the important feature that no information about the identity of the peers of the network is disclosed in advance.
Power generation, distribution, transmission, and consumption face ongoing challenges such as smart grid management, control, and operation, resulting from high energy demand, the diversity of energy sources, and environmental or regulatory issues. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain-based solutions for smart grid management, control, and operations. We systematically summarize existing work on the use and implementation of blockchain technology in various smart grid domains. The paper compares related reviews and highlights the challenges in the management, control, and operation for a blockchain-based smart grid as well as future research directions in the five categories: collaboration among stakeholders; data analysis and data management; control of grid imbalances; decentralization of grid management and operations; and security and privacy. All these aspects have not been covered in previous reviews.
Mehran Hajiaghapour‐Moghimi, Kamyar Azimi Hosseini, Ehsan Hajipour, Mehdi Vakilian
Cryptocurrency mining device (CMD) is a plug-and-play device installed by any low-voltage customer to convert electrical energy to digital money. Recently, the significant increase in the price of digital currencies has persuaded residential customers in many countries to employ CMDs to obtain quick and easy profit. However, these rapidly evolving loads can cause a substantial increase in the coincident peak load of distribution networks. Therefore, it can threaten the safe and reliable operation of the network. A straightforward way to restrict the penetration rate of these home-based miners is to increase the electricity price such that this business becomes unprofitable; however, this solution affects the national regulations and is not practical in many countries. This paper proposes a practical electricity pricing strategy to manage the operation of cryptocurrency mining loads appropriately. This pricing strategy can change the miner’ threat to an opportunity to sell more electrical energy during the off-peak hours to these loads and to maximize the profit of the utility. The proposed strategy is studied using the load profile dataset obtained from the measurements of Tehran Electricity Distribution Company, and its effectiveness is demonstrated.
The condition of power imbalance in flexible distribution networks (FDNs) is deteriorated due to the high penetration of distributed generators. Through peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading, multiple regions interconnected by soft open points (SOPs) can flexibly exchange power to alleviate power imbalance. As the physical foundation of P2P transactions, SOP regulation guarantees accurate instruction execution. Besides, smart contracts based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) facilitate highly credible P2P transactions. Oriented for the economic operation of interconnected FDNs, this article proposes a DLT-based P2P electricity trading method based on intelligent SOP regulation. First, a smart contract is designed for P2P transactions of FDNs, in which trading solutions are automatically settled with a modified highest combined offer principle. Then, a trading platform is built for the P2P electricity trading of interconnected FDNs. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified on a practical FDN with four-terminal SOPs in Tianjin.
Alain Aoun, Hussein Ibrahim, Mazen Ghandour, Adrian Ilinca
Global economic growth, demographic explosion, digitization, increased mobility, and greater demand for heating and cooling due to climate change in different world areas are the main drivers for the surge in energy demand. The increase in energy demand is the basis of economic challenges for power companies alongside several socio-economic problems in communities, such as energy poverty, defined as the insufficient coverage of energy needs, especially in the residential sector. Two main strategies are considered to meet this increased demand. The first strategy focuses on new sustainable and eco-friendly modes of power generation, such as renewable energy resources and distributed energy resources. The second strategy is demand-side oriented rather than the supply side. Demand-side management, demand response (DR), and energy efficiency (EE) programs fall under this category. On the other hand, the decentralization and digitization of the energy sector convoyed by the emersion of new technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), opened the door to new solutions for the energy demand dilemma. Among these technologies, blockchain has proved itself as a decentralized trading platform between untrusted peers without the involvement of a trusted third party. This newly introduced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading model can be used to create a new demand load control model. In this article, the concept of an energy cap and trade demand-side management (DSM) model is introduced and simulated. The introduced DSM model is based on the concept of capping consumers’ monthly energy consumption and rewarding consumers who do not exceed this cap with energy tradeable credits that can be traded using blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading. A model based on 200 households is used to simulate the proposed DSM model and prove that this model can be beneficial to both energy companies and consumers.
With increasing local energy generation consumers are converting into prosumers by selling their excess generation with their peers. This transaction of locally generated energy is called Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading. For P2P energy trading, a community system is widely endorsed but causes an increase in overall system cost as both prosumer and consumer need to pay charges to the community manager. In this context, a hybrid P2P energy trading market is implemented through a decentralized blockchain-based mechanism. It permits market participants to trade energy directly without involving an additional entity. Contracts play a crucial role in blockchain-based energy trading mechanisms. Thus, smart contracts are designed for the efficient implementation of this trading mechanism. These contracts are designed using the Solidity platform on REMIX IDE. Prosumer and consumer interact among themselves through the main smart contract to execute P2P energy trading till market-clearing time. Afterwards, they interact with the grid through Peer-to-Grid (P2G) smart contracts for additional sell/purchase of energy. Results show that the proposed approach leads to a smart, secure and economical mechanism of energy trading.
Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan · 5 authors
With advancements in renewable energy technologies, consumers are becoming prosumers, and renewable energy resources are being used in distributed networks. In an isolated distributed system, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is one of the most promising energy management solutions. In this paper, we propose a P2P energy trading method for micro-grids using open resources and technology. The proposed setup comprises an Internet of Things (IoT) server to transfer energy amongst the peers without human intervention, and an Ethereum based private blockchain is suggested for money transfer in the form of cryptocurrency. The IoT server enables the peers to control and monitor self-produced energy. Arduino UNO, ACS 712 hall-effect current sensor, and a relay are the main components used in the hardware setup. The current sensor data is sent in real- time to Arduino for onward communication to the IoT server. A user-friendly interface has been developed on the server to perform various energy trading tasks. Peers have the choice to access the server remotely to perform energy trading tasks. The energy trading events can be shared amongst peers through e-mail notifications. For financial transactions, we utilized Ganache graphical user interface (GUI) a private Ethereum blockchain eliminating the need for financial institutions. The proposed peer-to-peer energy trading model has been successfully tested for energy trading between two peers. This paper provides details of the proposed hardware and software setup and explains how low-cost P2P energy trading can be achieved.
Comprendre la consommation énergétique des blockchains : un regard sur les contrats intelligents Les systèmes de chaînes de blocs sont des registres répliqués dans un réseau pair à pair. Elles ont connu un développement rapide depuis quelques années en s'illustrant dans de nombreux domaines d'activités. En permettant le traitement et la sauvegarde de données dans un contexte distribué et Byzantin, ces technologies ont le potentiel de modifier de nombreux secteurs. Par exemple, dans le cadre de la finance décentralisée, les cryptomonnaies se développement comme une alternative aux monnaies fiduciaires en proposant un système de paiement dépourvu de tiers de confiance. Cependant, une certaine inquiétude vis-à-vis de l’impact environnemental des chaînes de blocs a émergé en parallèle de leur développement. En particulier, de nombreuses recherches ont démontré le coût énergétique important des chaînes basées sur les preuves de travail. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons de contribuer à l'étude expérimentale du coût énergétique des solutions logicielles basées sur les chaînes de blocs. Face à l'enrichissement progressif de l'écosystème lié aux chaînes de blocs, nous proposons BCTMark, un nouvel outil de déploiement et d'évaluation des performances des chaînes de blocs. Partant de cet outil, nous concentrons notre étude sur l'impact des contrats intelligents sur la chaîne de blocs Ethereum. D'une part, nous proposons un modèle pour l'estimation du coût énergétique des contrats intelligents développé pour Ethereum. D'autre part, nous proposons un nouveau protocole pour l'identification et l'élimination des contrats non utilisés dans le but de proposer des chaînes de blocs plus frugales en calculs et espaces de stockages.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system without centralized control. In order to produce new bitcoins, complex mathematical problem is solved in the mining process which uses a lot of electricity. Mining bitcoins requires a proof-of-work mechanism that secures the network and consumes a lot of energy. In this thesis, we study literature on how bitcoin uses energy and what energy sources it uses in its mining process. Also, this thesis aims to bring forth the innovative potential of bitcoin as well as analyze its energy consumption and the prospective future of bitcoin in the energy industry. Research shows that bitcoin mining seeks to use cheap electricity and it can accelerate the generation capacity of renewable energy. The deployment of bitcoin mining can facilitate the transition to a more resilient and cleaner electricity grid. Furthermore, deploying a large amount of new, geographically diverse mining capacity would also strengthen bitcoin network’s security and potentially further establish bitcoin as a sound currency for society.
The adoption of blockchain technology is emerging as a promising approach in managing decentralized local energy markets (LEM). In this study we analyze the issues related to the deployment of a blockchain-based LEM on devices as much as possible similar to modern smart meters. The presented LEM is based on an automated market-making mechanism. Buying and selling prices are dynamically determined by the amount of energy consumed and produced within a local energy community. We implemented the market in a blockchain application based on the Cosmos framework, which was deployed on embedded devices in a test pilot consisting of 18 residential buildings in Southern Switzerland. The sustainability of the application was investigated by analyzing the resources required by the blockchain to operate. The obtained results show how the developed application uses a small part of the resources of the embedded devices, approximately 100 MB for the memory usage and about 4% as regards the CPU. Thus, while the application deployment on smart meters is still troublesome, especially for memory requirements, the deployment at the data concentrator level is reasonable and feasible. Finally, we propose possible improvements and extensions that can be implemented in future versions of the presented solution.
Nafise Bayrami Fard, Mehdi Salay Naderi, Gevork B. Gharehpetian
Blockchain is an emerging technology that due to its unique features, such as decentralization, elimination of intermediaries, immutability and increased security, accuracy and transparency has been highly regarded in various industries, including the smart grid. Creating an electricity market for energy exchanges between producers and consumers in a microgrid is important because of the increasing tendency to use renewable energy such as solar cells. This paper presents two pricing mechanisms based on the Mid-Market Rate and the auction to find the optimal price of energy exchanges, which increases the profit from sales for producers and reduces the cost of purchase for consumers. This paper also proposes three smart contracts for peer-to-peer energy trading which are responsible for executing energy exchanges and enabling the recording of transaction information on the Ethereum network in an encrypted manner with great precision and transparency.
Direct transactions between prosumers without a central authority is allowed by the peer-to-peer energy trading market. Blockchain technology is considered as the optimal system to support P2P transactions and provide the internal payment platform. Miners as a significant role are motivated by the financial incentive to maintain the blockchain operation. This paper proposes a consortium blockchain system under Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus protocol to maintain the security and transparency of the energy transactions and a mining-rewarding mechanism to lower trading cost. The structure of the proposed blockchain as well as its implementation process are discussed in this paper. The results of a case study prove the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed blockchain based method.
Network trustworthiness is a critical component of network security, as it builds on positive inter-actions, guarantees, transparency, and accountability. And with the growth of smart city services and applications, trustworthiness is becoming more important. Most current network trustworthiness solutions are insufficient, particularly for critical infrastructures where end devices are vulnerable and easily hacked. In terms of the energy sector, blockchain technology transforms all currencies into digital modes, thereby allowing one person to manage and exchange energy with others. This has drawn the attention of experts in many fields as a safe, low-cost platform to track billions of transactions in a distributed energy economy. Security and trust issues are still relatively new in the current centralized energy management scheme. With blockchain technology, a decentralized energy infrastructure enables parties to establish micro- grid trading energy transactions and apply artificial intelligence (AI). Using AI in energy systems enables machines to learn various parameters, such as predicted required amounts, excess amounts, and trusted partners. In this article, we envision a cooperative and distributed framework based on cutting-edge computing, communication, and intelligence capabilities such as AI and blockchain in the energy sector to enable secure energy trading, remote monitoring, and trustworthiness. The proposed framework can also enable secure energy trading at the edge devices and among multiple devices. There are also discussions on difficulties, issues, and design principles, as well as spotlights on some of the more popular solutions.
Manuel Casquiço, Bruno Mataloto, João C. Ferreira, Vítor Monteiro · 6 authors
The decentralization in the electrical power grids has gained increasing importance, especially in the last two decades, since transmission system operators (TSO), distribution system operators (DSO) and consumers are more aware of energy efficiency and energy sustainability issues. Therefore, globally, due to the introduction of energy production technologies near the consumers, in residential and industrial sectors, new scenarios of distributed energy resources (DER) are emerging. In order to guarantee an adequate power management in the electrical power grids, incorporating producers, consumers and producers-consumers (prosumers) together, it is important to adopt intelligent systems and platforms that allow the provision of information on energy consumption and production in real time, as well as for obtaining a fair price for the sale and purchase of energy. In this paper, we analyze the literature to identify the appropriate solutions to implement a decentralized electrical power grid based on sensors, blockchain and smart contracts, evaluating the current state of the art and pilot projects already in place. We also discuss a proposal for a power grid model, with renewable energy production, combining Internet of Things, blockchain and smart contracts.
In microgrid, peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading has quickly ascended to the spotlight and gained enormous popularity. However, there are inevitable credit problems and system security problems. Besides, the current model in the electricity trading system cannot balance the utilities of multiple trading entities. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based distributed P2P electricity trading system. We define elecoins as currency in circulation within our trading system. In order to jointly optimize the utilities of both parties in the elecoins trading, we formulate the elecoins purchasing problem as a hierarchical Stackelberg game. Then, we design a distributed multi-agent utility-balanced reinforcement learning (DMA-UBRL) algorithm to search the Nash equilibrium. Finally, we factually build a blockchain system with a blockchain explorer and deploy an electricity trading smart contract (ETSC) on Ethereum, with a website interface for operating. The numerical results and the implemented realistic system show the advantages of our work.