Blockchain-Assisted Crowdsourced Energy Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled framework for crowdsourced energy systems, enabling distributed energy trading, market equilibrium modeling, and incentive design for small-scale energy resources.

Contribution

It introduces a novel operational model for crowdsourced energy systems integrated with blockchain technology, facilitating secure energy trading and market equilibrium analysis.

Findings

The model successfully depicts market equilibrium with distributed generators and loads.

Blockchain integration ensures secure and scalable energy trading.

Numerical tests validate the framework's effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

Abstract

Crowdsourcing relies on people's contributions to meet product- or system-level objectives. Crowdsourcing-based methods have been implemented in various cyber-physical systems and realtime markets. This paper explores a framework for Crowdsourced Energy Systems (CES), where small-scale energy generation or energy trading is crowdsourced from distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, and shapable loads. The merits/pillars of energy crowdsourcing are discussed. Then, an operational model for CESs in distribution networks with different types of crowdsourcees is proposed. The model yields a market equilibrium depicting traditional and distributed generator and load setpoints. Given these setpoints, crowdsourcing incentives are designed to steer crowdsourcees to the equilibrium. As the number of crowdsourcees and energy trading transactions scales up, a secure energy trading platform is required. To that end, the presented framework is integrated with a lightweight Blockchain implementation and smart contracts. Numerical tests are provided to showcase the overall implementation.