Moayad Aloqaily, Ouns Bouachir, Öznur Özkasap, Faizan Safdar Ali
Abstract Growing intelligent cities is witnessing an increasing amount of local energy generation through renewable energy resources. Energy trade among the local energy generators ( aka prosumers) and consumers can reduce the energy consumption cost and also reduce the dependency on conventional energy resources, not to mention the environmental, economic, and societal benefits. However, these local energy sources might not be enough to fulfill energy consumption demands. A hybrid approach, where consumers can buy energy from both prosumers (that generate energy) and also from prosumer of other locations, is essential. A centralized system can be used to manage this energy trading that faces several security issues and increase centralized development cost. In this paper, a hybrid energy trading system coupled with a smart contract named SynergyGrids has been proposed as a solution, that reduces the average cost of energy and load over the utility grids. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to create a hybrid energy trading platform over the smart contract for energy demand prediction. An hourly energy data set has been utilized for testing and validation purposes. The trading system shows 17.8% decrease in energy cost for consumers and 76.4% decrease in load over utility grids when compared with its counterparts.
Zahra Foroozandeh, Sérgio Ramos, João Soares, Zita Vale
This paper proposed a Mixed Binary Linear Programming (MBLP) approach to find the optimal size of some components of a Smart Building (SB) attempting to reduce the overall cost. The considered SB is equipped with local resources such as Photovoltaic (PV) panels, Electrical Vehicles (EVs), and the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Moreover, the SB is only connected with the grid by an Energy Management System (EMS) in which the whole SB has a single Contract Power (CP) such that EMS manages the power flow among external grid, local resources, apartments, and common services, for the goal of reducing the electricity bill. Hence, the wrong choice of CP and BESS capacity will impose unnecessary charges on the electricity bill. As a results, EMS has played a crucial role in SB in determining the best CP and BESS values. The obtained results of this work show the efficiency of the model in which by finding the optimal capacity of CP and BESS, the electricity bill improves by a 34% reduction.
The promising power-to-gas (P2G) technology makes it possible for wind farms to absorb carbon and trade in multiple energy markets. Considering the remoteness of wind farms equipped with P2G systems and the isolation of different energy markets, the scheduling process may suffer from inefficient coordination and unstable information. An automated scheduling approach is thus proposed. Firstly, an automated scheduling framework enabled by smart contract is established for reliable coordination between wind farms and multiple energy markets. Considering the limited logic complexity and insufficient calculation of smart contracts, an off-chain procedure as a workaround is proposed to avoid complex on-chain solutions. Next, a non-linear model of the P2G system is developed to enhance the accuracy of scheduling results. The scheduling strategy takes into account not only the revenues from multiple energy trades, but also the penalties for violating contract items in smart contracts. Then, the implementation of smart contracts under a blockchain environment is presented with multiple participants, including voting in an agreed scheduling result as the plan. Finally, the case study is conducted in a typical two-stage scheduling process—i.e., day-ahead and real-time scheduling—and the results verify the efficiency of the proposed approach.
Charithri Yapa, Chamitha de Alwis, Madhusanka Liyanage, Janaka Ekanayake
Smart Grid 2.0 is envisaged to automate the operations of the intelligent electricity grid. Blockchain and smart contracts are integrated to facilitate the transformation from DSO-centric operations to consumer-oriented, distributed electricity grid management. The envisaged smart grids, integrated with blockchain would provoke challenges, which would hinder the maximum utilization of Distribute Energy Resources (DERs). This comprehensive review aims at analyzing the applicability of blockchain technology in Smart Grid 2.0, which would facilitate a seamless decentralization process. Further, the paper elaborates the blockchain-based applications of future smart grid operations and the role of blockchain in each scenario. The paper further provides a concise analysis on the blockchain integration challenges, thereby ensure secure and scalable, decentralized operations of future, autonomous electricity networks.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 was recently implemented to transform Ethereum's transaction fee market. EIP-1559 utilizes an algorithmic update rule with a constant learning rate to estimate a base fee. The base fee reflects prevailing network conditions and hence provides a more reliable oracle for current gas prices. Using on-chain data from the period after its launch, we evaluate the impact of EIP-1559 on the user experience and market performance. Our empirical findings suggest that although EIP-1559 achieves its goals on average, short-term behavior is marked by intense, chaotic oscillations in block sizes (as predicted by our recent theoretical dynamical system analysis [1]) and slow adjustments during periods of demand bursts (e.g., NFT drops). Both phenomena lead to unwanted inter-block variability in mining rewards. To address this issue, we propose an alternative base fee adjustment rule in which the learning rate varies according to an additive increase, multiplicative decrease (AIMD) update scheme. Our simulations show that the latter robustly outperforms the EIP-1559 protocol under various demand scenarios. These results provide evidence that variable learning rate mechanisms may constitute a promising alternative to the default EIP-1559-based format and contribute to the ongoing discussion on the design of more efficient transaction fee markets.
Renewable energies (REs) are trending as the technology to improve its efficacy moving at a fast pace. REs has been utilized in many domestic and industrial premises as a surplus energy. Trading of this surplus energy within a local market scenario, can help in meeting the demand requirements and can outlook a new scope of energy trading. This requires high security and transparency among the stake holders. Among various technologies, blockchain can be proved as a promising platform for a secure and transparent transaction. This paper comprises an extensive review of different blockchain based energy trading model and discusses various research scopes for mitigating of certain issues with ongoing research models to gain higher efficiency.
Yang Xu, Ziming Liu, Cheng Zhang, Ju Ren · 6 authors
Renewable energy sources (RES) and low-carbon technology users play a vital role in modern power systems. However, RES generation is easily affected by the environment. Meanwhile, the load, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and prosumers, accounts for most low-carbon technology users. Their power is usually superimposed on peak loads without dispatching, which also exacerbates the instability of the power system. Current optimal dispatching mechanisms mainly rely on centralized organizations, while their dispatching process is not open and transparent. In this article, we propose a blockchain-based trustworthy dispatching approach for the distribution network in high renewable energy penetrated power systems. We first develop an optimal dispatching model considering EVs’ charging behavior and the prosumers’ economic benefits. With the model, prosumers can be dispatched to balance power and consume renewable energy, reducing the impact of disorderly charging on the grid and the abandonment of RES generation. An orderly charging iteration optimization (OCIO) algorithm is proposed to implement orderly EV charging while considering the charging cost and the period. We also propose a modified particle swarm optimization (mPSO) algorithm to publish dispatching tasks based on real-time power balance. Furthermore, blockchain is applied as an open and transparent ledger to record each entity’s power generation and consumption information, ensuring that the dispatching process is trustworthy. Finally, the effectiveness of the dispatching approach is verified in the modified IEEE 33-bus test system and Ethereum-based smart contracts.
Victor Takashi Hayashi, Felipe Valencia de Almeida, Andrea E. Komo
This paper describes a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) testbed that enables Bitcoin experimentation in real-time with energy consumption. The Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure enables practical activities considering a remote lab paradigm to allow students and enthusiasts to obtain a deep understanding of Blockchain technology, considering higher cognitive domains according to the Bloom taxonomy. The proposed solution is validated with an open-source Bitcoin miner implementation in Verilog, mobile, and web interfaces for energy consumption monitoring. This testbed may be used to foster Verilog design challenges for FPGA devices that provide a suitable solution considering performance and energy consumption metrics.
Abdullah Ayub Khan, Asif Ali Laghari, Desheng Liu, Aftab Ahmed Shaikh · 7 authors
A distributed power system operation and control node privacy and security are attractive research questions that deliver electrical energy systems to the participating stakeholders without being physically connected to the grid system. The increased use of renewable energy in the power grid environment creates serious issues, for example, connectivity, transmission, distribution, control, balancing, and monitoring volatility on both sides. This poses extreme challenges to tackle the entire bidirectional power flow throughout the system. To build distributed monitoring and a secure control operation of node transactions in the real-time system that can manage and execute power exchanging and utilizing, balancing, and maintaining energy power failure. This paper proposed a blockchain Hyperledger Sawtooth enabling a novel and secure distributed energy transmission node in the EPS-ledger network architecture with a robust renewable power infiltration. The paper focuses on a cyber-physical power grid control and monitoring system of renewable energy and protects this distributed network transaction on the blockchain and stores a transparent digital ledger of power. The Hyperledger Sawtooth-enabled architecture allows stakeholders to exchange information related to power operations and control monitoring in a private ledger network architecture and investigate the different activities, preserved in the interplanetary file systems. Furthermore, we design, create, and deploy digital contracts of the cyber–physical energy monitoring system, which allows interaction between participating stakeholders and registration and presents the overall working operations of the proposed architecture through a sequence diagram. The proposed solution delivers integrity, confidentiality, transparency, availability, and control access of the distribution of the power system and maintains an immutable operations and control monitoring ledger by secure blockchain technology.
Abstract The integration of distributed renewable energy sources into the conventional power grid has become a hot research topic, all part of attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emission. There are many distributed renewable energy sources available and the network participants in energy delivery have also increased. This makes the management of the new power grid with integrated distributed renewable energy sources extremely complex. Applying the technical advantages of blockchain technology to this complex system to manage peer-to-peer energy sharing, transmission, data storage and build smart contracts between network participants can develop an optimal consensus mechanism within the new power grid. This paper proposes a new framework for the application of blockchain in a decentralised energy network. The microgrid is assumed to be private and managed by local prosumers. An overview description of the proposed model and a case study are presented in the paper.
Min Zhang, Frank Eliassen, Amir Taherkordi, Hans‐Arno Jacobsen · 6 authors
In smart grids, the large-scale integration of distributed renewable energy resources has enabled the provisioning of alternative sources of supply. Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading among local households is becoming an emerging technique that benefits both energy prosumers and operators. Since conventional energy supply is still needed to help fill the gap between local demand and supply when the local solar generation is not sufficient, demand–response management will keep playing an important role in the future P2P energy market. Blockchain and smart contract technology has gained increasing attention in P2P trading for its secure operation. The performance of blockchain-based P2P energy trading still remains to be improved, in terms of latency and cost of computation resources. This article studies the challenges of demand–response management in P2P energy trading and proposes a blockchain-empowered energy trading system for a community-based P2P market. The proposed demand–response mechanism is developed using two noncooperative games, in which dynamic pricing is applied for suppliers. The proposed energy trading system is prototyped on a cluster network, with a coordinator running as a smart contract in a Hyperledger blockchain. We implemented both on-chain and off-chain processing modes to study the system performance. The results from experiments with our prototype indicate that our proposed demand–response games have a great effect on reducing the net peak load, and at the same time, the off-chain processing mode provides lower latency and overhead compared to the on-chain mode while still keeping the same system integrity as the on-chain mode.
Mohamed A. Mohamed, Seyedali Mirjalili, Udaya Dampage, Saleh H. Salmen · 6 authors
The impressive furtherance of communication technologies has exhorted industrial companies to link-up these developments with their own abilities with the target of efficiency enhancement through smart supervision and control. With this in mind, the blockchain platform is a prospective solution for merging communication technologies and industrial infrastructures, but there are several challenges. Such obstacles should be addressed to effectively adopt this technology. One of the most recent challenges relative to adopting blockchain technology is the energy consumption of miners. Thus, providing an accurate approach that addresses the underlying cause of the problem will carry weight in the future. This work addresses managing the energy consumption of miners by using the advantage of distributed generation resources (DGRs). Along the same vein, it appears that achieving the optimal solution requires executing the modified reconfirmation of DGRs and miners (indeed, mining pool systems) in the smart grid. In order to perform this task, this article utilizes the Intelligent Priority Selection (IPS) method since this method is up to snuff for corporative allocation. In order to find practical solutions for this problem, the uncertainty is also modeled as a credible index highly correlated with the load and generation. All in all, it can be said that the outcome of this research study can help researchers in the field of enhancement of social welfare by using the proposed technology.
Ritesh Mohan Acharya, B. Hanumantha Rao, M. P. Selvan
The energy sector is undergoing an enormous transition with new market mechanisms affecting the market and the traders. In the smart grid environment, an auction-based market can be useful to ensure trading between electric vehicles (EVs) and distribution companies (DisComs). However, the participation of EVs in the energy market poses specific issues. The first one is the involvement of aggregator/ auctioneer in trading procedures, which affects the energy trading as well as privacy of the EV owners. Second one is the auction mechanism should fulfill all critical economic properties, strategic and non-strategic constraints. In order to address these issues, a novel aggregator free mechanism is proposed in this paper allowing EVs to securely participate in the ancillary services market. A smart contract deployed in Blockchain is used for market-clearing. This paper proposes two kinds of implementation of auction-based ancillary services market in the distribution system. Through an extensive study performed on a hypothetical group of 76 561 EVs and 13 DisComs, it is found that the performance of the proposed scheme is superior in decentralized implementation compared to centralized implementation.
Typically, residential buildings neither allow flexibility in the individual contract power capacity nor considers buildings as unique electricity consumers. In this work, a smart building is designed that each electricity customer has flexible contract power and the whole collective residential building has a single contract power. A management entity is considered to manage all energy resources of the building such as the photovoltaic generation, electric vehicles, and battery energy storage system, taking into consideration the consumption from apartments and common services, to minimize the electricity bill. Hence, the best/optimal contract power capacity will contribute to minimizing electricity costs. Therefore, finding the optimal decision of the contract power value has received a significant role from the energy management in smart buildings. In this paper, a mixed binary optimization problem is formulated in which not only the optimal value of contract power is yield but the optimal schedule of the electric vehicle/battery storage charge and discharge are found, taking into consideration the photovoltaic generation and load consumption profiles. The proposed model is implemented for three scenarios, and the obtained results show that the model efficiency has a high performance with a significant electricity cost reduction, around 47%. The results pointed that using an optimal value of single contract power and intelligent management system, the building electricity costs decrease remarkably.
Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan
An open-source P2P energy trading platform facilitates energy trading amongst the peers. The proposed system provides real time data acquisition, monitoring and control of self-generated energy at a remote location. The trading activities are done on a web interface that uses a private Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and the trading activities performed on the web interface are recorded on a tamper-proof blockchain network. An internet of things platform is used to monitor and control the self-generated energy. Energy data is collected and processed by means of ESP32-S2 microcontrollers using field instrumentation devices which are connected to the voltage source and load. An open-source decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading system, designed on the blockchain and internet of things (IoT) architecture is proposed. The hardware setup includes a relay, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, a Wi-Fi router and ESP32-S2 microcontroller. For data transfer the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is used over a local network. ESP32-S2 is set up as MQTT client and Node-Red IoT server is used as MQTT broker. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) request method is implemented to connect the Node-Red server with the web interface developed using React.JS library. The system design, implementation, testing, and results are presented in this paper.
T. Yuvaraj, K.R. Devabalaji, S. Srinivasan, Natarajan Prabaharan · 7 authors
The electric power distribution plays a crucial part in the power systems to maintain the power quality and stability of the system for loss mitigation and voltage regulation. The reactive power compensators like a capacitor, DG, and DSTATCOM play a vital role in power quality and stability improvement by providing proper reactive power in the distribution system. This article provides a critical review and comparative analysis of various compensating devices allocation to achieve power loss mitigation and voltage regulation in the radial distribution system (RDS). The Bat Algorithm (BA) and Voltage Stability Index (VSI) are utilized for determining the optimal size and site of the compensating devices in the RDS. Further, the application of Blockchain technology is utilized for voltage regulation of energy trading RDS. To show the effectiveness of the present study, an IEEE 33 test system is considered. All three compensators are implemented in IEEE 33 test system and compared with existing approaches. The present study is very much helpful to the Distribution Network Operators for selecting the suitable compensator in real-time applications.
Shriyash Mohril, Mahipal Singh Sankhla, Swaroop S. Sonone, Rajeev Kumar
DLT or Distributed Ledger Technologies and Blockchains have a noteworthy character in presenting current implementation in smart cities. Systems get complete ingress to benefits for dispersed claims and safety of DLT that incorporates agreement procedures and smart pacts by the application of blockchain technologies. The merger of data and communication technologies within the power industry has commanded to a rebellion referred to as a smart grid (SG). The evidence of a smart city is emerging very quickly, mixing smart services, grid, appliances, building, and house these subunits must be capable of interrelating, attaching, and controlling remotely, collaboratively, to accomplish an improved superiority of life, substantiality, energy-saving community, and financial growth. The present technology in the SG and smart cities stems from a security viewpoint. Data origin and data integrity are amongst the key worries in Internet of Things (IoT)-founded surroundings such as vehicular networks, smart cities, and SGs. Blockchain, energy chain, a prototype for storage and retrieving the data created by smart houses in a secure way are projected. The possible implementation of smart cities concerning technology growth within the forthcoming offers added valued conversation during this paper. Temporarily, some applied practices all across the planet, and therefore, the main barricades to its application are systematically articulated.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading promotes the local consumption of renewable energy. However, it suffers from high transaction costs and mutual distrust among users. To address these issues, we propose a credit-based P2P electricity trading model in a blockchain environment. First, the P2P electricity trading process is introduced, which involves six stages: order generation, default query, order picking, trading execution, trading verification, and payment. Credit management is also introduced in this model to manage the default behavior of users. In particular, the default users are provided a waiting time in the default query stage or penalized in the payment stage. Finally, the model is simulated on the Hyperledger Fabric platform using Docker and Go. Experimental results show that the proposed model can facilitate cost reduction for users in the blockchain and realize credit management in P2P electricity trading, thereby enhancing trading stability and efficiency.