• Energy Research

The increasing adoption of clean energy technologies, including solar and wind generation, demand response, energy efficiency, and energy storage (e.g. batteries and electric vehicles) have led to the evolution of the traditional electricity markets from centralised energy trading systems into Distributed Energy Trading (DET) systems. Consequently, savvy business executives are exploring how blockchain might impact their competitive advantage in the emerging DET markets. Due to its salient features of distributed ledger, consensus mechanisms, cryptography, and smart contracts, blockchain technology is being used to provide decentralised trust, immutability, security and privacy, and transparency in DET system. However, integrating blockchain in DET systems is facing technical, administrative, standardisation and economic barriers. Consequently, we seek to conduct a comprehensive market analysis to identify the specific challenges hindering the integration of blockchain in DET systems. Nonetheless, we noticed that there isn't any evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Therefore, in this work we first proposed a conceptual evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Then, using the proposed framework, we reviewed the current studies on blockchain-based DET systems to the identify specific challenges hindering the adoption of blockchain and their proposed solutions. Our review found that, although there has been tremendous progress in addressing the technical barriers, the administrative, standardisation and economic barriers have grossly been under reviewed.

The increasing adoption of clean energy technologies, including solar and wind generation, demand response, energy efficiency, and energy storage (e.g. batteries and electric vehicles) have led to the evolution of the traditional electricity markets from centralised energy trading systems into Distributed Energy Trading (DET) systems. Consequently, savvy business executives are exploring how blockchain might impact their competitive advantage in the emerging DET markets. Due to its salient features of distributed ledger, consensus mechanisms, cryptography, and smart contracts, blockchain technology is being used to provide decentralised trust, immutability, security and privacy, and transparency in DET system. However, integrating blockchain in DET systems is facing technical, administrative, standardisation and economic barriers. Consequently, we seek to conduct a comprehensive market analysis to identify the specific challenges hindering the integration of blockchain in DET systems. Nonetheless, we noticed that there isn't any evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Therefore, in this work we first proposed a conceptual evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Then, using the proposed framework, we reviewed the current studies on blockchain-based DET systems to the identify specific challenges hindering the adoption of blockchain and their proposed solutions. Our review found that, although there has been tremendous progress in addressing the technical barriers, the administrative, standardisation and economic barriers have grossly been under reviewed.

Abstract Recently, blockchain adoption in prosumer-side energy trading has been actively studied. However, most of the conventional frameworks permanently store all transactions which increases blockchain management cost and reduces the user privacy. Additionally, most of the existing solutions focus on facilitating energy trading and negotiation, while ignoring two critical issues: data acquisition and contract execution. The former refers to the process of collecting power generation/consumption information from on-site energy resources which is required to scale. The latter refers to the process of adjusting controllable loads’ operation in real-time. In this paper, we propose a removable blockchain architecture that introduces a Temporary Chain (TC) where transactions can be stored for a particular period of time. The architecture enables an energy manager node to effectively collect data for facilitating real-time load control. TC reduces the volume of transactions stored in blockchain which increases scalability, throughput, and privacy of the users and reduces latency. We present two approaches to implement TC which are: i) blackboard where a central authority stores temporary transactions, and ii) removable ledger. We introduce a lightweight mode to transfer data. The implementation results show that the proposed framework reduces blockchain storage size and delay and increases throughput.

Abstract Recently, blockchain adoption in prosumer-side energy trading has been actively studied. However, most of the conventional frameworks permanently store all transactions which increases blockchain management cost and reduces the user privacy. Additionally, most of the existing solutions focus on facilitating energy trading and negotiation, while ignoring two critical issues: data acquisition and contract execution. The former refers to the process of collecting power generation/consumption information from on-site energy resources which is required to scale. The latter refers to the process of adjusting controllable loads’ operation in real-time. In this paper, we propose a removable blockchain architecture that introduces a Temporary Chain (TC) where transactions can be stored for a particular period of time. The architecture enables an energy manager node to effectively collect data for facilitating real-time load control. TC reduces the volume of transactions stored in blockchain which increases scalability, throughput, and privacy of the users and reduces latency. We present two approaches to implement TC which are: i) blackboard where a central authority stores temporary transactions, and ii) removable ledger. We introduce a lightweight mode to transfer data. The implementation results show that the proposed framework reduces blockchain storage size and delay and increases throughput.