Distributed ledger technology has the potential to revolutionize the exchange of value in energy supply systems. Trust is central to the records in a ledger and the measurement of energy production or consumption must be dependable for confidence in an energy transaction. The case of measurement accuracy and error detection in a rural micro-grid is investigated for methods to enhance trust in energy exchanges. The suitability of state estimation as a technique is evaluated for mitigating inaccuracies in meter accuracy and therefore increasing trust. Application of the same principle for error detection, either from intentional meter tampering or faulty equipment is outlined. State estimation is found to provide a small improvement to the measurement of energy in a simple radial micro-grid, suggesting that with further work this method could benefit micro-grid operators and users seeking improvements to the accuracy and error detection.
Zheng Che, Yu Wang, Juanjuan Zhao, Yan Qiang · 6 authors
With the rapid development of the energy internet, the transaction of distributed renewable energy (DRE) is playing an increasingly important role in the energy market. However, in the transaction model of distributed renewable energy combined with public blockchain technology, nodes in the trading network can join or leave the network at any time without any permission, which hinders the regulation of electricity institutions. Corresponding to the transaction principle, a distributed renewable energy transaction authentication mechanism based on consortium blockchain is proposed in this paper. First, certificate authority nodes were set in the transaction network to provide nodes with access authority by controlling the public keys and private keys of trading participants so that they can complete their identity authentication. Next, essential chaincodes in the transaction authentication were designed and deployed on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain site, and a simulation experiment of a simple DRE transaction was used to elaborate the details on the transaction process. Finally, the proposed model was evaluated according to its performance and proved to be practical and effective.
Shivam Saxena, Hany E. Z. Farag, Aidan Brookson, Hjalmar Turesson · 5 authors
This paper proposes a peer to peer (P2P), blockchain based energy trading market platform for residential communities with the objective of reducing overall community peak demand and household electricity bills. Smart homes within the community place energy bids for its available distributed energy resources (DERs) for each discrete trading period during a day, and a double auction mechanism is used to clear the market and compute the market clearing price (MCP). The marketplace is implemented on a permissioned blockchain infrastructure, where bids are stored to the immutable ledger and smart contracts are used to implement the MCP calculation and award service contracts to all winning bids. Utilizing the blockchain obviates the need for a trusted, centralized auctioneer, and eliminates vulnerability to a single point of failure. Simulation results show that the platform enables a community peak demand reduction of 46%, as well as a weekly savings of 6%. The platform is also tested at a real-world Canadian microgrid using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework, to show the end to end connectivity of smart home DERs to the platform.
Nowadays, it has been recognized that blockchain can provide the technological infrastructure for developing decentralized, secure, and reliable smart energy grid management systems. However, an open issue that slows the adoption of blockchain technology in the energy sector is the low scalability and high processing overhead when dealing with the real-time energy data collected by smart energy meters. Thus, in this paper, we propose a scalable second tier solution which combines the blockchain ledger with distributed queuing systems and NoSQL (Not Only SQL database) databases to allow the registration of energy transactions less frequently on the chain without losing the tamper-evident benefits brought by the blockchain technology. At the same time, we propose a technique for tamper-evident registration of smart meters' energy data and associated energy transactions using digital fingerprinting which allows the energy transaction to be linked hashed-back on-chain, while the sensors data is stored off-chain. A prototype was implemented using Ethereum and smart contracts for the on-chain components while for the off-chain components we used Cassandra database and RabbitMQ messaging broker. The prototype proved to be effective in managing a settlement of energy imbalances use-case and during the evaluation conducted in simulated environment shows promising results in terms of scalability, throughput, and tampering of energy data sampled by smart energy meters.
This paper presents the preliminary results of a set of research projects being developed at the distributed resources laboratory at the University of Reutlingen. The main aim of these projects is to couple distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) with distributed control of microgrids. Firstly, a DLT based solution for a local market platform has been developed. This enables end customers to participate in new local micro-energy-markets by providing them with a distributed, decentralized, transparent and secure Peer to Peer (P2P) payment system. Secondly, this solution has been integrated with an autonomous (agent-based) grid management. The integrated solution of both marked platform as well as agent based control has been implemented and tested in a real microgrid with different distributed components such as PV System, CHP and different kinds of controllable loads. This microgrid is located in the distributed energy resources laboratory at the University of Reutlingen. Thirdly, the resulting solution is being implemented as an easy to customize market solution by AC2SG Software Oy, a Finland based software company, developing solutions for the Indian market. In a next phase, the solution is going to be tested in real environment in off-grids systems in India.
The renewable energy industry represents a very dynamic sector, connected with other economic sectors. The trends in this field are numerous and various. The setting of EU targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction is a policy at European level. The huge amount of data calls for the use of complex data processing equipment and systems, so now we can talk about the smart grid, decentralization, the Energy Management System and the Energy storage system. Business development requires very large investments and various financing methods, but especially well-detailed and reasoned business models that can be adapted to local conditions. There are changes at the level of HR through the creation of new specific jobs, as well as continuous training for specialists. The main objective of this chapter is to present the major trends related to the renewable energy sector and their impact on the economic development and on the environment. This chapter presents 18 main trends identified by the authors and analyzed in the renewable energy field. Each of these trends follows in a brief overview the actual situation and the future perspective.
Yueqiang Xu, Petri Ahokangas, Seppo Yrjölä, Timo Koivumäki
Abstract Enabling and empowering the diverse energy resources to have active yet efficient participation in the smart grid and energy market is an unrivaled challenge for the energy industry. This research expands the four dominant archetypes of business models in the energy and electricity market, creating a fifth archetype, the “blockchain marketplace”. The contributions of the study are to identify the extant electricity market designs and architectures as centralized and pseudo-decentralized while proposing a fully decentralized architecture enabled by the blockchain. The research contributes to the literature of smart grids and demand-side management and introduces the value configuration/architecture approach for the energy market and business model domains.
Weihui Shao, Weisheng Xu, Zhiyu Xu, Bo Liu · 5 authors
Distributed energy resource (DER) will become the main primary energy in the future Smart Grid. However, it is impossible for DERs to connect to the grid freely and reliably through traditional technology such as micro grid or virtual power plant. As a new distributed computing paradigm, blockchain has the characteristics of security, transparency and decentralization. Consider these characteristics, this paper proposed a blockchain based virtual power plant model for DER's grid connection. The coordinated control method of virtual power plant and the independent grid connected behavior of DERs are organically linked by the incentive mechanism of blockchain, realizing the distributed dispatching calculation of virtual power plant. Results of case study showed that the proposed model could not only effectively reduce calculation costs of VPP, but also make grid connection more freely for DERs.
Ümit Cali, Claudio Cleverson de Lima, Xuefei Li, Yasuhiko Ogushi
Transactive Energy Systems are designed by taking advantage of the advanced control and economic operational functionalities to dynamically balance the electrical demand and supply within the electrical grid using advanced information and communication technologies. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), in particular blockchain, is considered one of the promising emerging technologies which is likely to transform the future business and social consumer behavior in several industrial segments. In this paper we present blockchain in Energy use cases segmentation and the associated standardization framework activities which are carried out by IEEE Standards Association (SA).
Lin Herenčić, Perica Ilak, Ivan Rajšl, Zlatko Zmijarević · 7 authors
Current trends of decentralization, digitalization, decarbonization and democratization in the power sector enable new business models featuring active participation of the distributed energy resources and distributed storage systems. Moreover, individual and small market participants acting as peers want to trade electricity within local communities. Peer-to-peer decentralized electricity trading in microgrids using distributed ledger technology could be a solution for establishing local markets and accelerating the integration of distributed energy resources. In this paper, main technical, economic, social and regulatory challenges and threats for implementation of the peer-to-peer concept for electricity trading in microgrids are stated and discussed.
The main drivers of the third industrial revolution era were the internet technologies and rise of renewable and distributed energy technologies. Transition to green and decentralized energy resources and digital transformation of the existing industrial infrastructure had been the biggest achievements of the third industrial revolution. The main drivers of the fourth era will be artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, advanced biotechnology, internet of things, additive manufacturing, and most importantly, distributed ledger technology (DLT). Energy forecasting such as wind and solar power forecasting models are the most common energy AI-based informatics applications in the energy sector. In addition, use of DLT is expected to be an industrial standard in various industrial sectors including energy business in the coming decade. This chapter emphasizes description of energy forecasting using AI and energy DLT and future developments and solutions to overcome challenges that are associated with standardization of the energy DLT applications.
Chi-Kin Chau, Jiajia Xu, Wilson G. Bow, Khaled Elbassioni
P2P (peer-to-peer) energy sharing allows household users to share their local energy resources (e.g., rooftop PVs, home batteries) based on an agreed cost-sharing mechanism (e.g., implemented as a smart contract over a blockchain ledger). Sharing energy resources is becoming a new form of sharing economy. This not only promotes renewable energy adoption among household users but also optimizes their energy resources efficiently. However, household users are self-interested and incentive-driven. It is not clear how to motivate them to team up for energy sharing, and what proper economic mechanisms are to incentivize them to do so in a socially efficient way. This paper sheds light on the economic principles of cost-sharing mechanisms for P2P energy sharing. We investigate P2P energy sharing scenarios of direct connections and grid settlement with simple cost-sharing mechanisms (e.g., proportional-split, bargaining games), and the subsequent stable coalitions, such that no group of users will deviate to form other coalitions. We characterize the social efficiency of P2P energy sharing by the strong price of anarchy that compares the worst-case stable coalitions and a social optimum. We show that the strong price of anarchy is mild, both in practice (by an extensive data analysis on a real-world P2P energy sharing project) and in theory (by a small bound in general settings). This can hence bolster the viability of P2P energy sharing.
The resilience of the power grid is critical for the energy delivery system and the assurance of the energy distribution process. The integration of blockchain technology with the power grid can provide a consistent view of the system state and constant validation. However, there are still significant challenges in the integration of blockchain in current power system architecture. From the cyber physical perspective, the physical components in the power system are heterogeneous and there are limited communication capabilities among these components. In this work, we propose a two-layer architecture that enables a state-aware blockchain integration with power grid state estimation and still scales in terms of performance dealing with high volume data.
Jun 1, 2019·2019 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2019 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe)
Christos Patsonakis, Sofia Terzi, Ioannis Moschos, Dimosthenis Ioannidis · 6 authors
The advancement and penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and renewable energy sources (RES) are transforming legacy energy systems in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions and energy waste. Demand Response (DR) has been identified as a key enabler of integrating these, and other, Smart Grid technologies, while, simultaneously, ensuring grid stability and secure energy supply. The massive deployment of smart meters, IoT devices and DERs dictate the need to move to decentralized, or even localized, DR schemes in the face of the increased scale and complexity of monitoring and coordinating the actors and devices in modern smart grids. Furthermore, there is an inherent need to guarantee interoperability, due to the vast number of, e.g., hardware and software stakeholders, and, more importantly, promote trust and incentivize the participation of customers in DR schemes, if they are to be successfully deployed.In this work, we illustrate the design of an energy system that addresses all of the roadblocks that hinder the large scale deployment of DR services. Our DR framework incorporates modern Smart Grid technologies, such as fog-enabled and IoT devices, DERs and RES to, among others, automate asset handling and various time-consuming workflows. To guarantee interoperability, our system employs OpenADR, which standardizes the communication of DR signals among energy stakeholders. Our approach acknowledges the need for decentralization and employs blockchains and smart contracts to deliver a secure, privacy-preserving, tamper-resistant, auditable and reliable DR framework. Blockchains provide the infrastructure to design innovative DR schemes and incentivize active consumer participation as their aforementioned properties promote transparency and trust. In addition, we harness the power of smart contracts which allows us to design and implement fully automated contractual agreements both among involved stakeholders, as well as on a machine-to-machine basis. Smart contracts are digital agents that "live" in the blockchain and can encode, execute and enforce arbitrary agreements. To illustrate the potential and effectiveness of our smart contract-based DR framework, we present a case study that describes the exchange of DR signals and the autonomous instantiation of smart contracts among involved participants to mediate and monitor transactions, enforce contractual clauses, regulate energy supply and handle payments/penalties.
With the power system reform and the increase of distributed energy penetration, effective dispatch of distributed energy faces opportunities and challenges. Traditionally, the centralized power transaction mode has high maintenance cost, low efficiency and untimely settlement. Therefore, it is hard to adapt to the high-frequency and small-scale distributed energy trading scenarios. To this end, this paper mainly proposes a distributed power trading method based on blockchain considering security constraints. The paper first reviews the development history of blockchain technology, and explores the theory of blockchain technology. At the same time, it combines the analysis of distributed energy features and summarizes some requirements for building a distributed energy trading market. Then the mechanism and model of distributed power trading considering security constraints are constructed. Finally, a distributed power trading method based on blockchain is proposed to ensure the transparency of transactions, and to provide smart contracts for distributed power multilateral transactions. Through the example of the Ethereum blockchain, the distributed power trading method based on blockchain proposed in this paper can realize the over-limit correction of power flow and the multilateral trading of power, and realize the digital management of electric energy.
Jun 1, 2019·2019 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2019 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe)
Maria Luisa Di Silvestre, Pierluigi Gallo, Eleonora Riva Sanseverino, Giuseppe Sciumè · 5 authors
The present paper shows the possibility to use a smart contract for defining a distributed Demand Response mechanism. The use of the blockchain and smart contracts for the Demand Response mechanism allows the creation of an automatic system, where network users can communicate with the DSO to provide their flexibility. The blockchain ensures that the same information is shared among the users of the grid, while preserving user privacy. The DSO notifies the request to increase or reduce the load in a given period of the day using channels, a native abstraction of Hyperledger Fabric. The smart contract computes the support provided by each user to fulfill the requested load adaptation and automatically remunerates users proportionally to their contribution.The first step is to record the energy consumptions of the users in order to evaluate the own daily baseline. Finished this phase, the Demand Response smart contract can start.The blockchain platform used for this application is Hyperledger Fabric since it turned to be flexible for smart contracts implementation and supports multi-tenancy. Results show the possibility to successfully apply the blockchain technology to this particular topic, even considering privacy preserving issues.
Boyu Wang, Morteza Dabbaghjamanesh, Abdollah Kavousi‐Fard, Shahab Mehraeen
Power grid resilience, reliability, and sustainability can be improved significantly by decomposing the large grids into networked microgrids (NMGs). However, the optimal energy management problem and preserving the security in NMGs are more complicated and challenging. This paper aims to propose a secured stochastic energy management framework for NMGs based on the modified blockchain approach, utilizing the directed acyclic graph (DAG). Using the decentralized and transparent blockchain technology will help to have higher security and lower risks within the network, thus eliminating the financial fraud and cutting down the total operational cost. In order to address the issues arising in the traditional blockchain models, mainly due to the storage and high complexities of hash address calculations, this paper proposes a new modified blockchain technology based on the DAG method. Also, a novel data restoration technique is developed to provide a way to restore the data with appropriate accuracy. The unscented transform (UT) approach is employed to model the uncertainties of forecast error in hourly load demand, solar power output, and wind turbines power output. Finally, the proposed model is tested on an NMG system with four MGs, including two residential MGs (as the noncrucial loads), a commercial MG (as the intermediate level loads), and a hospital MG (as the crucial loads).
By leveraging the charging and discharging capabilities of Internet of electric vehicles (IoEV), demand response (DR) can be implemented in smart cities to enable intelligent energy scheduling and trading. However, IoEV-based DR confronts many challenges, such as a lack of incentive mechanism, privacy leakage, and security threats. This motivates us to develop a distributed, privacy-preserved, and incentive-compatible DR mechanism for IoEV. Specifically, we propose a consortium blockchain-enabled secure energy trading framework for electric vehicles (EVs) with moderate cost. To incentivize more EVs to participate in DR, a contract theory-based incentive mechanism is proposed, in which various contract items are tailored for the unique characteristics of EV types. The contract optimization problem falls into the category of difference of convex programing, and is solved by using the iterative convex-concave procedure algorithm. Furthermore, we consider the scenario where the statistical knowledge of the EV type is unknown. In such a case, we demonstrate how to derive the probability distribution of the EV type by exploring computational intelligence-based state of charge estimation techniques, e.g., Gaussian process regression. Finally, the security and efficiency performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed and validated.
In order to build a local electricity market (LEM), community members can trade electricity peer-to-peer (P2P) with their neighbors. This paper proposes a Hierarchical Bidding and Transaction Structure based on blockchain (HBTS). First, combined with the multi-agents, each microgrid corrects the estimated cost probability distribution of other microgrids by Bayesian theorem, making its probability closer to the accurate probability. Second, for maximize the benefits of the microgrid, this paper uses the Nash equilibrium in the Cournot model to find the optimal quotation and output of different bidding strategies for the microgrid under different power demand conditions. Then the exchange of electricity translates into an exchange of digital proof of electricity purchases and sales of electricity on the Hyperledger Fabric, ensuring the security of the transaction process and the irreparable modification of ledgers. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the bidding strategy through experiments, and analyze the transaction process.
In this paper we propose and analyze a community-driven platform for flexibility provision based on a distributed ledger. We introduce and analyze the platform for the use case of a self-organized decentralized virtual power plant consisting of a local community of individual prosumers with photovoltaic-storages located on a low voltage feeder. Like a virtual power plant, it aggregates small-scale assets and is able to provide ancillary services in the form of active power provision to the electrical power system. However, the decentralized virtual power plant provides a direct flexibility market access of the distributed assets without the need for a third party. Thus, balancing group managers or system operators can directly interact with the distributed assets in an aggregated way without the need for an aggregator. The solution approach uses a heuristic algorithm for the coordination combined with a distributed ledger and democratic consensus within the community. We propose the concept in detail, describe the prototypical implementation based on a consortium Ethereum blockchain and discuss results of the proof-of-concept. Our numerous test runs with up to 20 participants showed that the coordinated flexibility provision, energy sharing and according financial settlement works in practice, but would need an upgrade concerning the smart-meter hardware for an implementation in the field. We analyze the impact of the coordination interval on the community self-sufficiency and determine that one minute intervals are enough to reach 96% of the optimum. We evaluate the storage and communication effort and conclude with suggestions for future improvements and other possible applications of the decentralized platform like aggregated flexibility coordination between balancing group managers and system operators.