TruPro: a blockchain-based decentralised prosumer electricity trading platform for electrical vehicles (EVs)

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) have attracted significant attention in recent years primarily due to minimal adverse impact on the environment and efficiency of running costs. Although use of EVs brings noticeable benefits to users and the overall society, deployment of EVs, new carbon control regulations and interactive utility models are creating a compression on current electricity system. Further, due to the growth in adoption of EVs, the demand for electricity is expected to increase significantly over the next few years which can result in low-voltage networks. Since traditional networks are not designed for such loads, it can lead to inadmissible network conditions and resource overloads, which require network expansion through decentralized power generation. Distributed energy resources (DERs) such as smart grids leverage emerging technologies including internet of things (IoT) to achieve efficient energy management system. The aim of this research is to facilitate peer-to-peer energy distribution solution by focusing on the challenge of a decentralized, transparent reward system to achieve incentivization of power generation and distribution at microgrid level. Leveraging inherent benefits of blockchain technology, we develop a blockchain-based decentralized electricity trading platform to incentivize power generation at such micro level. Our platform allows local communities to contribute to meet the increased electricity demands by trading the generated electricity directly to EVs in a trusted and secure P2P environment while keeping the sustainability of the generated energy to balance demand and generation. We include detailed design specification, implementation and evaluation of the proposed electricity trading platform to assess feasibility of such system to be utilized within a production-level system.