Towards Efficient Privacy and Trust in Decentralized Blockchain-Based Peer-to-Peer Renewable Energy Marketplace

Renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly important as a substitute for energy produced with fossil fuels. However, renewable energy production faces a number of challenges in the energy market and its management, such as suboptimal energy distribution, inflexible pricing models, and inaccurate consumption information. A decentralized electricity marketplace may address these challenges. Such a platform, however, needs to guarantee that the transactions are executed following the market rules and regulations, cannot be manipulated, and are consistent with the energy that is actually generated. One of the ways to provide these guarantees is to leverage blockchain technology. This work describes a decentralized blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy marketplace which aims at addressing privacy and trust issues. It utilizes private permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric and its smart contracts to perform energy trading settlements. In addition, to be compliant with the energy trade regulations, the marketplace includes the regulator actor, which acts as a governmental representative and oversees the marketplace operations. Finally, the proposed marketplace ensures actors' data privacy while preserving the integrity and auditability of all operations. We first define a set of requirements that the marketplace must meet and describe the proposed marketplace architecture. Further, we present the performance evaluation and provide insights into the challenges the marketplace poses. Results demonstrate that due to governmental control, the marketplace must have a regulatory entity overseeing all processes, which results in a certain level of centralization. However, blockchain technology allows to automate marketplace operations and conduct P2P energy trade settlements while preserving actors' privacy.