Decentralized Platform for Investments and Operation of Energy Communities

With the rise of blockchain technology and distributed ledger application platforms in general, it became possible to create new forms of digital assets and implement financial mechanisms in a transparent and secure way. Many companies use these features to create crowdfunding campaigns to raise funds for projects and offer digital assets in form of tokens to investors in return for their investments.This paper aims to propose and elaborate a platform based on distributed ledger technology for investing in flexible assets of an energy community. In addition to the investment platform, complex management mechanisms would be implemented to enable the investors to freeze transactions or stop fund withdrawals if they find the investment wrong or unnecessary. In this system, tokens modeled on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform would be issued to investors as proofs of their investment, and as voting stakes for managing the collected funds. Tokens would also be used as tradeable assets in complex market mechanisms implemented on top of the investment platform.The investment platform is complemented with community energy management system, where the community manager (CM) is an electricity market entity and optimizes the operation of the energy community assets in order to minimize the investment return period. Benefits gained by smart positioning of the energy community in the market are shared among micro-loan investors. The concept is demonstrated for energy community investments in different distributed energy sources.