A survey on blockchain‐enabled smart grids: Advances, applications and challenges

Chao Liu,Yue Chen,Xiaoshuai Zhang,Jonathan Loo,Kok Koeng Chai

doi:10.1049/smc2.12010

Chao Liu, Yue Chen + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.12010

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Abstract

Electric power grid infrastructure has revolutionized our world and changed the way of living. So has blockchain technology. The hierarchical electric power grid has been shifting from a centralized structure to a decentralized structure to achieve higher flexibility and stability, and blockchain technology has been widely adopted in the energy sector to deal with grid management, billing, metering, and so on, because of its nature of decentralization. Here, the aim is to provide a multi-dimensional review on the technological advances of the blockchain in smart grids. Its corresponding applications based on these advances, including company projects and use cases, are summarized. Furthermore, the security threat issues in smart grids, Ethereum Virtual Machine (i.e. the operating environment of consensus mechanisms), and smart contracts are analysed, with a brief conclusion to manifest the prior tasks in building secure blockchain-based infrastructures in smart grids. As such, the challenges and features of different protocols and their applicability in each use case are identified to provide an insightful guide for future research studies.

Highlights

Traditional power grids are generally used to carry power from central generators to a large number of customers
Compared with conventional Smart Grid (SG) that fully depends on the redundancy of each entity to ensure system reliability, blockchain can utilize distributed ledger technology (DLT) and consensus mechanisms that can be continuously replicated on all or at least a group of nodes in a blockchain network to avoid a single point of failure
This paper presents a comprehensive review of the blockchain technology solution to smart grid transformation from the point of technological advances in its industrial applications and, the challenges and opportunities

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Traditional power grids are generally used to carry power from central generators to a large number of customers. Smart Grid (SG) uses two‐way flows of electricity and information to create an automated and distributed advanced energy delivery network, which is expected to be the ‐generation power grid [3]. In the process of energy decentralization and digitalization from a traditional hierarchical grid network to a smart grid, the main challenge is to explore the most suitable control paradigm and distributed technologies. Compared with conventional SG that fully depends on the redundancy of each entity to ensure system reliability, blockchain can utilize distributed ledger technology (DLT) and consensus mechanisms that can be continuously replicated on all or at least a group of nodes in a blockchain network to avoid a single point of failure. The interactions between the distributed resources and grid operators are highly random with different control standards and protocols so that an automated control system is required to accommodate more types of decentralized participants

Scalability

Energy transactions

Payment

Findings

| CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS