학술논문

Blockchain-Based Decentralized Virtual Power Plants of Small Prosumers
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Access Access, IEEE. 9:29490-29504 2021
Subject
Aerospace
Bioengineering
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Engineering Profession
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
General Topics for Engineers
Geoscience
Nuclear Engineering
Photonics and Electrooptics
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Robotics and Control Systems
Signal Processing and Analysis
Transportation
Blockchain
Peer-to-peer computing
Distributed ledger
Smart contracts
Biological system modeling
Renewable energy sources
Production
Public blockchain
virtual power plant
smart contract
small prosumers
distributed ledger technology
peer to peer energy trading
Language
ISSN
2169-3536
Abstract
The deployment of small-scale renewable energy sources will transform the management of energy grids towards more decentralized solutions in which the prosumers will have a more active role. Regulatory and market barriers are driving the implementation of virtual aggregation models in which the small-scale prosumers work together on a larger scale to gain benefits that could not be obtained on an individual basis. In this paper, we propose to use public blockchain and self-enforcing smart contracts to construct Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) of prosumers to provide energy services. A model has been defined for capturing the prosumer level constraints in terms of available energy profiles and energy service requirements enabling their optimal aggregation in hierarchical structures. A lightweight decentralized solution for VPPs construction is implemented using smart contracts enabling its efficient running on the public blockchain. Smart contracts are encoding the model constraints and are defining functionalities for prosumers to initiate or join a VPP implementing the complete chain of Offer-Operate-Measure-Remunerate actions. The VPP will be managed on top of a distributed ledger technology offering decentralized functionality for tracking and validating the delivery of energy based on the blockchain transactions and for energy and financial settlement, the remuneration being done according to the amount of energy provided by individual prosumers. Experimental results show that the proposed solution runs successfully on the public blockchain with good execution time and can address Balancing Responsible Party requests for additional generation. The overhead in terms of gas consumption and transactional throughput stays within reasonable boundaries.