On the performance and scalability of consensus mechanisms in privacy-enabled decentralized renewable energy marketplace

【Author】 Tkachuk, Roman-Valentyn; Ilie, Dragos; Robert, Remi; Kebande, Victor; Tutschku, Kurt

【Source】ANNALS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

【影响因子】1.901

【Abstract】Renewable energy sources were introduced as an alternative to fossil fuel sources to make electricity generation cleaner. However, today's renewable energy markets face a number of limitations, such as inflexible pricing models and inaccurate consumption information. These limitations can be addressed with a decentralized marketplace architecture. Such architecture requires a mechanism to guarantee that all marketplace operations are executed according to predefined rules and regulations. One of the ways to establish such a mechanism is blockchain technology. This work defines a decentralized blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy marketplace which addresses actors' privacy and the performance of consensus mechanisms. The defined marketplace utilizes private permissioned Ethereum-based blockchain client Hyperledger Besu (HB) and its smart contracts to automate the P2P trade settlement process. Also, to make the marketplace compliant with energy trade regulations, it includes the regulator actor, which manages the issue and consumption of guarantees of origin and certifies the renewable energy sources used to generate traded electricity. Finally, the proposed marketplace incorporates privacy-preserving features, allowing it to generate private transactions and store them within a designated group of actors. Performance evaluation results of HB-based marketplace with three main consensus mechanisms for private networks, i.e., Clique, IBFT 2.0, and QBFT, demonstrate a lower throughput than another popular private permissioned blockchain platform Hyperledger Fabric (HF). However, the lower throughput is a side effect of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant characteristics of HB's consensus mechanisms, i.e., IBFT 2.0 and QBFT, which provide increased security compared to HF's Crash Fault Tolerant consensus RAFT.

【Keywords】Renewable energy marketplace; Blockchain technology; Peer-to-peer energy trading; Hyperledger Besu; Data privacy

【发表时间】2023 2023 SEP 2

【收录时间】2023-09-16

【文献类型】实验仿真

【主题类别】

区块链应用-实体经济-能源领域