A Fast and Secured Vehicle-to-Vehicle Energy Trading Based on Blockchain Consensus in the Internet of Electric Vehicles

The organization and management of electricity markets worldwide are rapidly evolving, moving towards decentralized, distributed, and renewable energy-based generation with solutions based on real-time data exchange. A Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) energy trading has emerged as one of the most promising alternatives for relieving the load imposed on the traditional grid enabling two individuals to buy and sell energy directly without intermediaries. However, the Internet of Electric Vehicles (IoEV) environment is trustless, and such P2P energy trading is prone to different kinds of cyber attacks. Blockchain technology has lately been proposed to implement V2V energy trading to securely and fairly share energy. The consensus mechanism is one of the most important modules of blockchain applied to the V2V network. It determines the efficiency and security among untrustworthy EVs of the energy trading blockchain (ETB). Nevertheless, most works on ETB have currently adopted traditional consensus mechanisms. Due to high computing power and communication overhead, these consensus algorithms are unsuitable for applications requiring real-time services such as energy trading. The efficient and secured Hashgraph is the revolutionary technology of consensus in blockchain and a promising technology suitable for V2V energy trading with frequent transactions. However, Hashgraph does not support the dynamic addition and deletion of nodes and is completely decentralized and vulnerable to Sybil Attack in a large-scale blockchain. Furthermore, this “complete decentralization” model may result in states losing the ability to macro-control the energy industry and even systemic energy security issues. Therefore, we propose a Block Alliance Consensus (BAC) mechanism to solve these problems. BAC can maintain the throughput of Hashgraph and resist Sybil Attack in a large-scale P2P energy trading network. We design a cryptography-based leader election mechanism and adopt a reputation incentive mechanism to motivate honest and cooperative electric vehicles (EVs). Finally, we implement ETB and the BAC consensus mechanism on the Hyperledger Fabric platform. The high efficiency and security of BAC and the blockchain-based V2V energy trading platform are verified through experiments.