Blockchain-based Privacy-Preserving Charging Coordination Mechanism for Energy Storage Units
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Energy storage units (ESUs) enable several attractive features of modern smart grids such as enhanced grid resilience, effective demand response, and reduced bills. However, uncoordinated charging of ESUs stresses the power system and can lead to mass blackout. On the other hand, existing charging coordination mechanisms suffer from several limitations. First, the need for a central charging controller (CC) presents a single point of failure that jeopardizes the effectiveness of the charging coordination. Second, existing mechanisms overlook privacy concerns of the involved customers. To address these limitations, in this paper, we leverage the blockchain and smart contracts to build a decentralized charging coordination mechanism without the need for centralized charging coordinator. After each ESU sends a charging request to the smart contract address on the blockchain, the smart contract will run the charging coordination mechanism in a self-executed manner such that ESUs with the highest priority are charged in the present time slot while charging requests of lower priority ESUs are deferred to future time slots. We have implemented the proposed mechanism on the Ethereum blockchain and our analysis shows that the blockchain enables a decentralized charging coordination with increased transparency, reliability, and privacy preservation.
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