The accurate quantification of grid carbon emission factors (CEFs) is foundational for robust carbon accounting, effective climate policy, and credible corporate sustainability reporting. Traditional national-average CEFs are fundamentally inadequate, perpetuating the “copper plate” fallacy by ignoring profound spatial and temporal heterogeneity within interconnected power systems. This review critically evaluates the emerging paradigm of “grid hierarchical and zonal division” as a necessary response to this challenge. We systematically analyze the limitations of existing methodologies, highlighting the significant gap between top-down administrative calculations and bottom-up physical flow tracing. As our central contribution, we propose an integrated three-layer framework that synthesizes established but previously siloed concepts, physical flow modeling, policy boundary definition, and data architecture, into a unified structure. The novelty lies in their explicit integration and the modeling of interdependencies across layers: a Physical Flow Layer (‘engine’), a Policy Boundary Layer (‘rulebook’), and a Data and Calculation Layer (‘nervous system’). Our comparative analysis demonstrates that no single methodology is universally superior; a strategic, hybrid application across the hierarchy is essential. A structured case-based analysis applying the framework to China’s West-East Electricity Transfer corridor demonstrates its practical utility, with illustrative estimates from published comparative analyses suggesting that different accounting choices for cross-border electricity can result in differences of 15%–30% in an importing region’s reported Scope 2 emissions. The review identifies critical challenges data transparency, treatment of electricity imports, and lack of standardization, and proposes actionable pathways. Future research frontiers include dynamic real-time CEFs, artificial intelligence for forecasting and zoning, and blockchain for data integrity. This framework provides an essential blueprint for next-generation grid CEFs indispensable for guiding a precise and efficient energy transition.
A multi-agent transaction optimization decision-making method based on blockchain Berge-NS equilibrium is proposed, aiming to protect user interests and achieve carbon reduction objectives. Firstly, by improving the utility function of electricity users and quantifying the impact of blockchain technology on the electricity utility of market entities, a blockchain based P2P electricity trading architecture for microgrids is constructed, and a blockchain network and utility function for electricity users are designed; Secondly, the Evolutionary Game Theory based on bounded rationality decision-making is introduced to construct a Berge-NS game model on both sides of electricity supply and demand. The distributed iterative algorithm and step size control method are used to solve the Nash equilibrium, and the strategy evolution of demand side subjects in the game process is studied through dynamic processes; Finally, numerical simulations were conducted to analyze the trading strategies of bilateral contract markets, centralized trading markets, and dual layer decision-making models for electricity sellers, verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of the models and algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-agent trading Berge-NS decision-making method for microgrid electricity market exhibits certain performance advantages in reducing carbon emissions, lowering user electricity costs, and improving user satisfaction.
Stephen Oko Gyan Torto, Rupendra Kumar Pachauri, Jai Govind Singh, Shubham Tiwari · 7 authors
Global projects are mobilizing technologies to fight power generation curtailment and smooth demand by exploiting excess energy via transactive energy management and control. Sharing and transferring energy between microgrids helps manufacturers and businesses create energy autonomously. The transition to Multi-Vector Multi-Agent Energy Systems (MMV-ES) demands a paradigm shift from traditional centralized control to decentralized, market-based coordination. Transactive Energy Management (TEM) has emerged as a key enabler in this context, supporting local flexibility, peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and integrated energy vectors across distributed assets. This review systematically decomposes and classifies the existing state of TEM from several perspectives: the market topology, the interaction of the agent, game-theoretic models and the real deployment challenges. Moreover, two game-theory formulations (cooperative and non-cooperative) were given special attention and a detailed comparison between Shapley value and Nucleolus was provided as approaches for fair cost allocation. To enhance the adaptability of the market and the overall efficiency of the system, we introduce the Transactive Energy Reformulation Model (TE-RM), a hybrid model combining AI-powered congestion pricing with coalition formation and fairness-based incentives. The comparative tables in this paper summarize TEM and TE-RM's strengths and weaknesses and compare it to the centralized and conventional DSM methodologies. Lastly, key research gaps including scalability, regulatory fit, and AI model interpretability are reviewed, and future directions are proposed for the integration of future advanced technologies (e.g., reinforcement learning, blockchain, IoT) to enable stable, fair and interoperable energy markets.
The modern energy transition has outpaced the control and optimization frameworks built to govern it. As power and energy systems fragment into webs of renewable generators, storage operators, flexible loads, and carbon-constrained firms, the deterministic, single-optimizer models that once sufficed buckle against nonlinearity, bounded rationality, and strategic conflict among parties who learn and revise as they go. Evolutionary game theory (EGT), which traces how strategies propagate through populations by imitation and selection rather than instantaneous optimization, offers a route through this difficulty—one this review develops across three scales of low-carbon coordination central to cleaner production: enterprise-level industrial symbiosis, system-level smart energy operation, and market-level carbon governance. We synthesize three decades of theory alongside the recent fusion of EGT with artificial intelligence, where deep reinforcement learning approximates high-dimensional payoffs, federated learning lets rival firms co-train models without surrendering proprietary data, and blockchain underwrites decentralized mechanism execution. The synthesis is accompanied by two illustrative numerical case studies, constructed for this review rather than drawn from the surveyed literature, whose quantitative outputs are reported below as demonstrations of modeled behavior rather than as empirical measurements. In the first of these, cooperative emergence in industrial symbiosis hinges on critical thresholds that travel from 0.15 to 0.75 as subsidies and transaction costs vary, with anchor-enterprise targeting accelerating cooperation 2.4-fold while cutting outcome variance 3-fold. In smart energy coordination, AI-enhanced learning buys 32 to 41% faster convergence, yet pays 25 to 39% larger oscillations—a speed–stability tension whose resolution lives in a narrow learning-rate band near 0.08 to 0.12, outside which either sluggishness or instability takes hold. Carbon-market behavior turns on price thresholds: emitters switch abruptly from buying quotas toward investing in abatement once the clearing price clears firm-specific triggers, a discrete state switch that smooth equilibrium analysis misses entirely. Across all three domains, fragmented data, path dependence, and regime-switching dynamics recur as the binding constraints on modeling and on governance alike. Four mechanisms prove invariant to scale—the decisive weight of initial conditions, the catalytic leverage of well-positioned anchor agents, the equilibrium-shaping force of institutional design, and the computational reach added by AI integration—which suggests that insight earned in one domain transfers to the others. We close by mapping open problems in heterogeneity modeling, verification under deep uncertainty, and the still-unrealized coupling of digital twins with privacy-preserving learning. EGT emerges not as retrospective description but as prospective guidance for the cooperative transitions on which credible decarbonization depends.
Large controllable loads, such as Bitcoin-mining facilities, are increasingly viewed as valuable sources of power-system flexibility, yet the conditions under which this flexibility is realized remain poorly understood. We examine this issue in the Texas power market, where large loads face both wholesale electricity prices and incentives created by coincident-peak-based transmission charges. We find that mining load declines as costs rise across both channels, and this response is moderated by hashprice, a measure of expected revenue for Bitcoin miners. When hashprice is higher, mining load is less responsive to electricity-sector costs. This pattern is consistent with aggregate mining load arising from heterogeneous devices operated around distinct breakeven points. The wholesale-price response illustrates this mechanism most clearly. Mining load remains largely online at low electricity prices but begins to decline once prices exceed an implied curtailment threshold, and higher hashprice shifts this threshold to higher wholesale prices. Bitcoin miners therefore respond to electricity-sector costs, but the available flexibility varies with revenue conditions in the crypto-financial sector. Treating such loads as stable demand-response resources may overstate their available flexibility.
A.S. Kannan, E. Baraneetharan, R.Venkatasubramanian, S. Sasi · 6 authors
India's ambitious renewable energy targets of 500 GW by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2070 necessitate transformative energy trading solutions capable of harnessing distributed renewable sources. This paper introduces a blockchain-enabled peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading platform designed for India's diverse energy landscape, which includes rooftop solar, wind plants, and microgrids in both urban and rural areas. Built on the Ethereum foundation, the platform employs smart contracts to automate energy transactions between prosumers, reducing dependence on the conventional grid and advancing India's energy security goals. The system integrates machine learning algorithms trained on specific Indian usage patterns and weather conditions to forecast optimal trading times, accounting for seasonal changes, festivals, and industrial demand cycles. Key model assumptions include: (i) prosumers have bidirectional smart meters with IoT connectivity; (ii) weather data availability from Indian Meteorological Department stations; (iii) baseline electricity tariffs following state-level regulatory frameworks; and (iv) participants operate within Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission's P2P trading guidelines. Core parameters include LSTM networks with 50 hidden units, learning rate of 0.001, and 24-hour prediction horizons; Random Forest models with 100 estimators and maximum depth of 10; smart contract gas limits of$3,000,000$units; and dynamic pricing coefficients$\alpha=0.15$and$\beta=0.08$calibrated against Tamil Nadu industrial tariffs. Through automated transactions, the platform allows small-scale generators to sell surplus energy directly to local consumers, mitigating the$18-20 \%$distribution losses typical of the Indian grid. Pilot studies in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra showcased significant results, including a 35-45% cost saving for participating industries and transparent carbon credit accounting, aligning with emerging ESG compliance needs. The platform contributes to the Digital India initiative by fostering a decentralized energy infrastructure that supports both economic development and environmental sustainability.
Sustainable energy communities (ECs) are rapidly expanding in scale and heterogeneity, making fully centralized energy management increasingly impractical due to computational burden and privacy concerns. In this context, this review synthesizes distributed optimization (DO) as a practical management paradigm for ECs, identifies key application areas (demand response, distributed generation and storage management, and microgrid or smart-grid integration) and profiles scalability, privacy, and resilience characteristics. The survey follows a systematic protocol: records are sourced from Scopus, filtered with iteratively refined keyword sets, and screened following a PRISMA flow. Key technological enablers, such as blockchain/distributed ledgers, artificial intelligence, and game-theoretic constructs, are assessed and analyzed for how they support secure data exchange, real-time coordination, and incentive compatibility across multi-agent energy networks. The analysis highlights persistent challenges for DO at EC scale, including convergence under heterogeneity, time-varying conditions, communication delays, cybersecurity and privacy guarantees, while recent advances (e.g., ADMM) partially mitigate these issues without sacrificing local autonomy. Across representative studies, DO achieves near-centralized optimality with 0.0029% gap. Overall, we present an integrative framework that maps DO families to EC use cases and outlines research directions toward robust, privacy-preserving, and scalable EC optimization. • Recent advances in Distributed Optimization Methods. • Technological Enablers for Sustainable Energy Communities. • Technology innovations for distributed optimization in energy systems. • Distributed Optimization Challenges in energy systems
The Local Energy Market (LEM) is a key element in the energy sector's transition toward a decentralized system, enabling the integration of a growing number of small generation sources and energy storage facilities located at end-user locations.By utilizing digital energy trading platforms provided by LEMs, small consumers, producers, and prosumers actively participate in system balancing, which, among others, allows them to increase profits and energy independence.The efficiency of energy exchange in LEM is achieved by means of optimization methods that make use of sensitive participant data, such as energy consumption profiles.Therefore, ensuring privacy while simultaneously ensuring trust in the achieved optimal quantitative and qualitative results is crucial.The classic technology used in decentralized systems, i.e., blockchain, does not provide adequate scalability when transactions result from solving optimization problems.In this article, we analyze the possibilities of verifying optimization results by the use of cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP).We explain how ZKP can support privacy and enable verification of computations without the need of repeating them for every participant.We also refer to existing ZKP implementations on LEM, while highlighting the barriers of high computational costs that prevent direct implementation of complex optimization algorithms within ZKP protocols.'To overcome these barriers, we present an approach integrating ZKP with optimality certificates, which has significant potential to increase the efficiency of
Inter-provincial electricity transactions within China’s unified power market are complicated by spatial heterogeneity, asynchronous dispatch timelines, and strategic deviations in bilateral commitments. Existing mechanisms often struggle with ex-post contestability, temporal inconsistencies, and poor alignment between real-time system conditions and deviation pricing, undermining the market’s fairness and reliability. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel Tri-Ledger Coordinated Settlement (TCS) framework with built-in temporal consistency. The tri-ledger design consists of (1) a Contract Ledger capturing day-ahead bilateral schedules, (2) a Dispatch Ledger reflecting system-level nodal redispatch outcomes, and (3) a Deviation Ledger reconciling discrepancies across provinces through an enforceable and tamper-resistant protocol. Central to this framework is a Distributionally Robust Deviation Pricing (DRDP) model, which penalizes deviation behaviors not based on deterministic thresholds but through ambiguity-aware dual pricing anchored in Wasserstein-ball uncertainty sets. This allows the pricing system to anticipate manipulative strategies while offering probabilistic fairness to genuine imbalances caused by renewables or congestion. Furthermore, a Non-Contestable Decoupled Execution Mechanism (NCDEM) is developed to isolate provincial profit zones during redispatch operations, ensuring that a province cannot benefit by manipulating its declared bilateral trades or influencing others’ deviation compensations. The proposed approach guarantees strategy-proofness under minimal information assumptions and supports distributed execution by provincial grid companies without centralized re-optimization. The effectiveness of the framework is demonstrated on a stylized multi-province testbed derived from China’s Eastern and Central grid clusters. Numerical experiments show that the DRDP-based settlement leads to over 18.4% improvement in fairness-adjusted social welfare and reduces strategic deviation incentives by up to 73% compared to deterministic baseline models. Sensitivity analyses validate robustness under multiple load and RES penetration scenarios. The proposed TCS framework offers policy-relevant insights for implementing transparent and resilient provincial electricity market settlements under China’s “dual-track” trading architecture.
Virtual Power Plant (VPP) trading mechanisms confront unprecedented challenges from behavioral complexities and technological uncertainties that conventional rational choice models inadequately address. This research develops an integrated framework combining prospect theory-driven decision modeling with evolutionary smart contracts and multi-stage negotiation protocols to enhance trading effectiveness in cross-regional energy markets. We establish mathematical foundations incorporating loss aversion, probability distortion, and reference-dependent preferences into VPP decision-making, while developing adaptive contracts capable of autonomous evolution responding to market changes. Through composite game-theoretic analysis examining nested interactions between contract evolution and negotiation dynamics, we validate the framework across three comprehensive scenarios: emergency dispatch under extreme weather, renewable energy integration, and cross-regional collaboration. Simulation results demonstrate 15–25% negotiation efficiency improvements compared to traditional mechanisms, with behavioral models capturing significant heterogeneity in loss aversion coefficients (2.1–3.4) across VPP configurations. The evolutionary contracts successfully adapt within 72-hour windows to policy changes and technological developments, while maintaining system stability. Cross-regional analysis reveals how cultural distance and information asymmetries influence trading outcomes, with the framework achieving superior market integration despite these barriers. These findings establish new paradigms for behaviorally-informed energy market design, offering transformative implications for renewable integration and decentralized electricity systems.
Maneesha Papireddygari, Xintong Wang, Bo Waggoner, David M. Pennock
Automated Market Makers (AMMs) are used to provide liquidity for combinatorial prediction markets that would otherwise be too thinly traded. They offer both buy and sell prices for any of the doubly exponential many possible securities that the market can offer. The problem of setting those prices is known to be #P-hard for the original and most well-known AMM, the logarithmic market scoring rule (LMSR) market maker [Chen et al., 2008]. We focus on another natural AMM, the Constant Log Utility Market Maker (CLUM). Unlike LMSR, whose worst-case loss bound grows with the number of outcomes, CLUM has constant worst-case loss, allowing the market to add outcomes on the fly and even operate over countably infinite many outcomes, among other features. Simpler versions of CLUM underpin several Decentralized Finance (DeFi) mechanisms including the Uniswap protocol that handles billions of dollars of cryptocurrency trades daily. We first establish the computational complexity of the problem: we prove that pricing securities is #P-hard for CLUM, via a reduction from the model counting 2-SAT problem. In order to make CLUM more practically viable, we propose an approximation algorithm for pricing securities that works with high probability. This algorithm assumes access to an oracle capable of determining the maximum shares purchased of any one outcome and the total number of outcomes that has that maximum amount purchased. We then show that this oracle can be implemented in polynomial time when restricted to interval securities, which are used in designing financial options.
Waqas Amin, Qi Huang, Jianping Li, Abdullah Aman Khan · 6 authors
An increase in the popularity of peer-to-peer energy trading in smart grids due to the massive integration of renewable energy sources demands effective and competitive pricing and energy allocation policies to ensure fairness within the market framework. Considering the scalability issues, technical complexity, and operational costs of distributed ledger technology such as blockchain, the reputation of the participants becomes a prominent factor to ensure trustworthiness, reduce risk, and increase market efficiency. This paper proposes a novel method to determine the reputation of participants within the energy market. Based on the evaluated reputation of the participants, an effective pricing method along with an energy distribution technique is devised by considering several market dynamics that significantly affect the pricing and energy allocation method. Extensive experiments have been conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results demonstrate that through the proposed model, the energy bills of the buyers can be reduced by 44%. This highlights the tangible benefits and practical applicability of the proposed approach in optimizing energy costs for consumers in the P2P energy trading ecosystem.
In the past three decades, there has been a sweeping trend in Western and developed countries worldwide to transform the vertically integrated electricity supply chain into competitive electricity markets to diversify investment in the system and ultimately drive down operation costs. Nonetheless, due to some geopolitical and economic reasons, many developing countries adopted a modestly liberalized version of the power market (imperfect market). With the trend of privatization, specifically at the generation level, to leverage the hypothetical competitiveness, countries that did not adopt a full-fledged market structure face a dilemma. The system operators of incumbent imperfect market models find it increasingly difficult to deal with multiple private ownership of Independent Power Producers who are unwilling to share their detailed operational parameters for long-term generation scheduling (lasting for years). In this paper, Blockchain (BC) is being advocated as a platform that simulates a virtual market environment to address such issues. The proposed BC-based structure allows generators to participate in the short-term scheduling mechanism (such as day-ahead) in a trust-free environment without sharing their vital data yet achieving efficient, market-grade solutions. The feasibility of this new proposition is demonstrated through three different application scenarios, utilizing real-world load and renewable generation profiles sourced from the respective Grid System Operators databases. Python library (PYPSA) and Ethereum Testnet are being used for grid simulation and BC platform implementation respectively. The results of BC-assisted generation scheduling are presented and compared with the imperfect market model to highlight the viability of the proposed new approach.
This study presents a distributed electricity trading system using smart contracts to improve transaction efficiency and reduce costs in power markets. Three trading models are analyzed: centralized trading, blockchain-based decentralized trading, and smart contract-driven automated trading. The advantages and challenges of each model are examined, focusing on factors like node inclusion time, transaction costs, and price stability. The results show that the smart contract-driven model outperforms the others by increasing market efficiency, lowering transaction costs, and reducing price fluctuations. Through simulations and real-world analysis, this study provides support for using blockchain technology in power markets and offers practical advice for improving electricity trading systems. The findings suggest that the proposed system could greatly enhance transparency, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness in distributed energy markets, even in uncertain market conditions.
Christian Winzer, Héctor Ramírez-Molina, Lion Hirth, Ingmar Schlecht
Decarbonization involves a large-scale expansion of low-carbon generators such as wind and solar and the electrification of heating and transport. Both space heating and battery-electric cars have significant embedded flexibility potential. Granular price signals that convey abundance or scarcity of electricity are a precondition for customers or aggregators acting on their behalf to exploit this flexibility. However, unmitigated real-time prices expose customers to electricity price risks. To tackle the dual need of providing flexibility incentives while protecting customers from cost shocks, real-time tariffs with a hedging component can be a solution. In such contracts customers pre-agree an amount of energy and a consumption profile, while hourly deviations are charged at spot prices. In this paper we analyze design options by using a dataset of anonymized smart meter data and show that profile tariffs can bring electricity bill volatility to similarly low levels as fixed tariffs while providing full flexibility incentives from spot prices. • Profile contracts reduce bill volatility to similar levels as fixed price contracts. • Profile contracts restore flexibility incentives suppressed by fixed price contracts. • Profile contracts may reduce bill of flexible customers compared to fixed prices. • Demand for profile contracts expected to increase as load flexibility increases.
Michael Osinakachukwu Ezeh, Adindu Donatus Ogbu, Augusta Heavens Ikevuje, Emmanuel Paul-Emeka George
Effective contract management is critical for the energy sector, where complex agreements and regulatory requirements demand precision and oversight. Leveraging technology for improved contract management can transform how energy companies manage their contracts, enhancing efficiency, compliance, and strategic alignment. This paper explores the impact of technological advancements on contract management processes in the energy sector, emphasizing digital solutions and automation. The energy sector deals with multifaceted contracts involving various stakeholders, including suppliers, contractors, regulatory bodies, and customers. Traditional contract management methods, often characterized by manual processes and paper-based documentation, are prone to errors, delays, and inefficiencies. Technology, particularly contract lifecycle management (CLM) software, offers comprehensive solutions to these challenges by digitizing and automating contract management processes. CLM software facilitates the entire contract lifecycle, from drafting and negotiation to execution and renewal. These platforms provide centralized repositories for all contract documents, ensuring easy access and retrieval. Advanced features such as automated alerts and notifications for key dates and obligations help companies stay compliant with contractual and regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of penalties and legal disputes. Moreover, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities integrated into CLM solutions enable intelligent contract analysis and risk assessment. AI-driven tools can extract critical data from contracts, identify potential risks, and suggest mitigative actions. This predictive insight enhances decision-making, allowing energy companies to proactively address issues before they escalate. Blockchain technology also holds significant potential for contract management in the energy sector. Smart contracts, enabled by blockchain, offer a secure and transparent way to automate contractual obligations. These self-executing contracts reduce the need for intermediaries and enhance trust among parties, ensuring that terms are met efficiently and without dispute. In addition to these technologies, cloud-based platforms offer scalability and flexibility, allowing energy companies to manage contracts remotely and collaboratively. This is particularly beneficial in an industry where projects span multiple locations and jurisdictions. In conclusion, leveraging technology for contract management in the energy sector results in streamlined processes, improved compliance, and enhanced strategic alignment. By adopting digital solutions and automation, energy companies can mitigate risks, reduce costs, and drive operational efficiency, ultimately contributing to their sustainability and competitiveness in a rapidly evolving market. Keywords: Leveraging, Technology, Energy Sector, Contract Management, Improved.
Around the world policymakers and regulators are struggling with the question of how to design retail electricity tariffs in the face of increasing penetration of local generation (e.g., solar PV), smart appliances, local storage, and electric vehicles. There is a widespread recognition that retail tariffs should vary dynamically across time and space, reflecting the changing conditions (congestion and losses) on the underlying networks. But, at the same time, there is recognition that such tariffs potentially expose retail customers to substantial risk. Risk averse retail customers desire protection against price spikes and volatile wholesale spot prices. This paper seeks to derive the optimal retail contract in the special case in which the uncertainty in the market is contractible (in the sense defined here). We show that the optimal retail contract exposes the prosumer to the wholesale spot price at the margin, but also perfectly insulates the customer from risk, achieving the first-best outcome. We show how the hedge component of this retail contract can be constructed from standard-form hedge contracts. We draw out several lessons for policymakers.
Given the complexity of issuing, verifying, and trading green power certificates in China, along with the challenges posed by policy changes, ensuring that China's green certificate market trading system receives proper mechanisms and technical support is crucial. This study presents a green power certificate trading (GC-TS) architecture based on an equilibrium strategy, which enhances the quoting efficiency and multi-party collaboration capability of green certificate trading by introducing Q-learning, smart contracts, and effectively integrating a multi-agent trading Nash strategy. Firstly, we integrate green certificate trading with electricity and carbon asset trading, constructing pricing strategies for the green certificate, carbon, and electricity trading markets; secondly, we design a certificate-electricity-carbon efficiency model based on ensuring the consistency of green certificates, green electricity, and carbon markets; then, to achieve diversified green certificate trading, we establish a multi-agent reinforcement learning game equilibrium model. Additionally, we propose an integrated Nash Q-learning offer with a smart contract dynamic trading joint clearing mechanism. Experiments show that trading prices have increased by 20%, and the transaction success rate by 30 times, with an analysis of trading performance from groups of 3, 5, 7, and 9 trading agents exhibiting high consistency and redundancy. Compared with models integrating smart contracts, it possesses a higher convergence efficiency of trading quotes.
The modern power generation systems are increasing their reliance on high penetrations of distributed energy resources (DERs). However, the optimal dispatching mechanisms mainly rely on central controls which receive the load demand information from the electricity utility providers and allocate the electricity production targets to participating generating units. The lack of transparency and control over the DER fuel inputs makes the physical power purchase agreements (PPAs) a cumbersome task. This research work proposes an innovative fractal moth flame optimization (FMFO) approach to tackle the problem of integrated load dispatch (ILD). The proposed methodology provides a mechanism to integrate the information of the proposed optimizer, i.e., FMFO into the smart contracts enabled by the blockchain technology. This problem entails the allocation of loads to power-generating units in a manner that minimizes the total generation cost in a decentralized manner. To improve the efficiency of dispatch operations in the presence of a substantial integration of wind energy, this study proposes a novel framework based on the principles of fractal heritage, drawing inspiration from the classical MFO method. To assess the effectiveness and adaptability of the algorithm suggested, various non-convex scenarios in the context of optimization for ILD are considered. These scenarios incorporate valve-point loading effects (VPLEs), capacity limitations, power plants with multiple fuel options, and the presence of stochastic wind (SW) power uncertainty, following a Weibull distribution. The findings demonstrate exceptional performance in terms of minimizing fuel generation costs compared to traditional algorithms.
Pengfei Zhao, Shuangqi Li, Zhidong Cao, Paul Jen‐Hwa Hu · 9 authors
Decentralized trading schemes involving energy prosumers have prevailed in recent years. Such schemes provide a pathway for increased energy efficiency and can be enhanced by the use of blockchain technology to address security concerns in decentralized trading. To improve transaction security and privacy protection while ensuring desirable social governance, this article proposes a novel two-stage blockchain-based operation and trading mechanism to enhance energy hubs connected with integrated energy systems (IESs). This mechanism includes multienergy aggregators (MAGs) that use a consortium blockchain and its enabled proof-of-work (PoW) to transfer and audit transaction records, with social governance principles for guiding prosumers’ decision-making in the peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction management process. The uncertain nature of renewable generation and load demand are adequately modeled in the two-stage Wasserstein-based distributionally robust optimization (DRO). The practicality of the proposed mechanism is illustrated by several case studies that jointly show its ability to handle an increased renewable generation capacity, achieve a 16.7% saving in the audit cost, and facilitate 2.4% more P2P interactions. Overall, the proposed two-stage blockchain-based trading mechanism provides a practical trading scheme and can reduce redundant trading amounts by 6.5%, leading to a further reduction of the overall operation cost. Compared to the state-of-the-art benchmark methods, our mechanism exhibits significant operation cost reduction and ensures social governance and transaction security for IES and energy hubs.
Liaqat Ali, M. Imran Azim, Nabin B. Ojha, Jan Peters · 9 authors
The electricity market has increasingly played a significant role in ensuring the smooth operation of the power grid. The latest incarnation of the electricity market follows a bottom-up paradigm, rather than a top-down one, and aims to provide flexibility services to the power grid. The blockchain-based local energy market (LEM) is one such bottom-up market paradigm. It essentially enables consumers and prosumers (those who can generate power locally) within a defined power network topology to trade renewable energy amongst each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion using blockchain technology. This paper presents the development of such a P2P trading-facilitated LEM and the analysis of the proposed blockchain-based LEM by means of a case study using actual German residential customer data. The performance of the proposed LEM is also compared with that of BAU, in which power is traded via time-of-use (ToU) and feed-in-tariff (FiT) rates. The comparative results demonstrate: (1) the participants’ bill savings; (2) mitigation of the power grid’s export and import; (3) no/minimal variations in the margins of energy suppliers and system operators; and (4) cost comparison of Ethereum versus Polygon blockchain, thus emphasising the domineering performance of the developed P2P trading-based LEM mechanism.