Abstract
With the emergence of renewable energy resources, such as solar panels, wind turbines and plugin electric vehicles, there is an increasing need for peer-to-peer energy trading (P2P-ET) among small-scale energy producers, known as prosumers. Many recent studies have suggested blockchain for P2P-ET to provide many advantages over centralized solutions. These include, but are not limited to, improved security, privacy, fast payment settlement and better fault tolerance. However, to leverage blockchain at scale, its well-known limitations, i.e., scalability and performance, should be adequately analyzed and addressed. Thus, in this proposed Ph.D. research, blockchain-based solutions for P2P-ET are investigated, with their performance being carefully evaluated, to show their feasibility and efficiency in energy trading applications. First, we conducted a systematic survey on the evaluation of blockchain performance by categorizing all reviewed solutions into two general categories, empirical analysis and analytical modelling. The current empirical blockchain evaluation methodologies, including benchmarking, monitoring, experimental analysis and simulation, are comparatively reviewed in the empirical analysis. The analytical modelling includes the stochastic models applied to the performance evaluation of mainstream blockchain consensus algorithms. To examine IOTA’s applicability for P2P-ET, its performance was rigorously studied. IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). It uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) to store transactions, aiming at achieving better scalability over blockchain-based distributed ledgers. Simulation and analytical results reveal the impact of the transaction arrival rate, tip selection algorithms (TSAs), weighted TSA randomness, and network delay on the throughput. Then, we evaluated the performance of Hyperledger Besu, another promising blockchain solution for P2P-ET. We have carefully designed a set of comparative experiments and judiciously selected typical parameters, including transaction send rate, network size, node flavour, load balancing, consensus, and block time. We further analyzed how these parameters impact the performance of a private Besu blockchain through extensive experimental evaluations using the Hyperledger Caliper benchmark tool and careful log data analyses. Finally, we proposed and developed a unified Blockchain-based framework for P2P-ET called BPET, which combines blockchain with microservice architecture for high reliability. A decentralized application (DApp) prototype was developed. A case study of P2P-ET in the Alberta electricity wholesale market was conducted with real data set from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed BPET system.
Caixiang Fan
Ph.D., Assistant Professor at The King’s University, Blockchain Researcher
My research interests include blockchain, transactive energy, and performance modelling.