Blockchain: Elements of Physical Architecture, Empowering Features and Applications in the Indian Power Sector

As businesses grow, trust among participating stakeholders assumes prime importance. The transparency and efficiency in the transactions that occur in these businesses are equally valuable as the profits. Digitization of the economy helps ease-out the conduct of business; however, the increase in vulnerability to cyber-attacks is also on the rise. Blockchain technology revolutionizes the way digital transactions can occur and holds much promise in securing the flow of information that primarily drives them. Such a distributed ledger framework allows the traceability of a transaction through its immutable chain of blocks. Each block registers a time-stamped information set, verified by all the stakeholders involved in the business. These sets of features and much more make the blockchain technology an immensely powerful force to bring in transparency, efficiency, and trust in various industries. The paper's primary focus is given the features that empower a blockchain to facilitate various tasks securely, efficiently, and smoothly in a power sector. It also gives impressions of pilot projects in India with blockchain applications in different sectors. Glimpses of a prototype developed by the authors for managing the trading of rooftop solar energy among a set of consumers have been provided as one of the applications in power distribution.