Blockchain based electricity trading within the microgrid with renewable resources

Abstract

Recent years brought increasing climate change which in turn lead to more research regarding the utilization of green and renewable sources of energy. These energy sources impose the need for transformation and upgrade of the existing power grids. Standard consumers of electrical energy are becoming so called prosumers that represent consumers that can now produce electrical energy by using various renewable energy sources such as sunlight or wind. The appearance of prosumers drastically increased the complexity of power grids, as these users are now able to produce and sell the excess energy to other consumers within the grid. On the other hand, local communities can form their smaller, localized, electrical grid, known as microgrid, in order to trade energy between themselves in an efficient manner. This more complex power grid needs new mechanisms that would manage energy trading, and that would protect the privacy of the consumers and prosumers. For this, we propose а platform that is relying on smart contracts usage within blockchain network with modified consensus protocol that itself reduces the amount of energy needed to maintain the blockchain network.