Blockchain-Assisted Generation Rescheduling in Imperfect Market Environments

In the past three decades, there has been a sweeping trend in Western and developed countries worldwide to transform the vertically integrated electricity supply chain into competitive electricity markets to diversify investment in the system and ultimately drive down operation costs. Nonetheless, due to some geopolitical and economic reasons, many developing countries adopted a modestly liberalized version of the power market (imperfect market). With the trend of privatization, specifically at the generation level, to leverage the hypothetical competitiveness, countries that did not adopt a full-fledged market structure face a dilemma. The system operators of incumbent imperfect market models find it increasingly difficult to deal with multiple private ownership of Independent Power Producers who are unwilling to share their detailed operational parameters for long-term generation scheduling (lasting for years). In this paper, Blockchain (BC) is being advocated as a platform that simulates a virtual market environment to address such issues. The proposed BC-based structure allows generators to participate in the short-term scheduling mechanism (such as day-ahead) in a trust-free environment without sharing their vital data yet achieving efficient, market-grade solutions. The feasibility of this new proposition is demonstrated through three different application scenarios, utilizing real-world load and renewable generation profiles sourced from the respective Grid System Operators databases. Python library (PYPSA) and Ethereum Testnet are being used for grid simulation and BC platform implementation respectively. The results of BC-assisted generation scheduling are presented and compared with the imperfect market model to highlight the viability of the proposed new approach.