Decentralized IoT Platform for Flexibility Service Providers in Power Systems

The power system is undergoing a fundamental transformation to become low-carbon and sustainable, and to reduce its adverse impact on the climate. To meet this challenge, power generation is shifting towards intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, leading to an increasing demand for additional flexibility on the side of end consumers who are becoming active participants in electricity markets. These goals imply that traditional electricity suppliers will have to upgrade their services and models or be replaced by a new type of supplier - aggregator. An aggregator will allow end consumers to be active and adaptive through a variety of price signals, such as dynamic pricing, consumption adjustment, reward fees, etc. In this paper, we present an architecture for a platform envisioned as a decentralized market for flexibility service providers in the power system, based on Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed ledger technologies. The platform will enable controllable and verifiable interaction of aggregators with end consumer devices in a trustless environment, as well as functionalities such as secure data exchange, search, history analysis, flexibility, and reputation management. The technical feasibility of implementing such a platform is demonstrated using the IOTA network.