Blockchain-Based Privacy Preserving and Energy Saving Mechanism for Electricity Prosumers

With the development of distributed and renewable energy resources and smart grids, energy management systems that allow electricity prosumers to schedule their power usage, are seen as a prominent solution for reducing electricity costs. This paper presents a novel blockchain-based mechanism to incentivize prosumers to save energy, while preserving their privacy. In the proposed mechanism, each prosumer utilizes an energy management system that is based on the percentage power change (PPC) at each hour of the day. The use of PPC values allows the proposed blockchain to preserve the privacy of the prosumers as no sensitive information is shared. The calculated PPC values are shared among the prosumers. The prosumer with the minimum PPC value is selected as the validator of the blockchain, which is responsible for creating the next block of the blockchain. The problem of approving the validator, by other prosumers, is formulated using a novel zero-metric weighted average consensus. The communication model required to reach this consensus is investigated and the consensus value is analytically derived. Multiple test systems with varying number of prosumers are simulated and analyzed. The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed mechanism to sustain energy while preserving privacy in a scalable manner.