Integrating Smart Contracts with WDNs Framework for Energy Management and Secure Transactions

The management of energy consumption and payment transactions using a secure, decentralized energy system framework is essential in the water distribution network (WDN). The water energy market, in which energy may be transformed into a digital asset that is potentially monitored, trackable and tradable, might greatly benefit from the deployment of blockchain technology. This is because the blockchain has transaction privacy, decentralization, security, and immutability features. Furthermore, using blockchain smart contracts enables energy market management operations such as consumers, prosumers, and enterprises to register and track their utilization as well as to be aware of the financial transactions. In this paper, we optimize a secure peer-to-peer (P2P) Ethereum blockchain platform for water energy consumption and payment transactions among WDN reservoirs and customer nodes. Additionally, we developed a WDN energy trading and payment Ethereum smart contract to monitor autonomous pay-per-use payment and energy distribution on the decentralized P2P trade network.