Abstract
Modern power systems are rapidly evolving into complex cyber-physical systems. The increasingly complex interaction among different energy entities calls for a secure, efficient, and robust cyber infrastructure. As an emerging distributed computing technology, Blockchain provides a secure environment to support such interactions. This paper gives a prospective on using Blockchain as a secure, distributed cyber infrastructure for the future grid. Firstly, the basic principles of Blockchain and its state-of-the-art are introduced. Then, a Blockchain based smart grid cyber-physical infrastructure model is proposed. Afterwards, some promising application domains of Blockchain in future grids are presented. Following this, some potential challenges are discussed.
Highlights
Human society is facing the critical challenges of climate change, more frequent extreme weathers, energy shortage, and ever-increasing energy demand
This paper aims to give forward-looking discussions on the potential role of Blockchain in future energy systems
Consortium chain usually refers to a network that is composed of a few institution-consortiums, and consortiums can cooperate with others but are not fully trusted; the fully private chain is more computationally efficient because it has strict access, read and write permissions
Summary
Human society is facing the critical challenges of climate change, more frequent extreme weathers, energy shortage, and ever-increasing energy demand. A recent technology in the distributed computing paradigm, i.e. Blockchain [4], provides a new promising solution for the cyber infrastructure of nextgeneration grids. Firstly the basic principles and state-of-the-art of Blockchain are introduced (Section 2); a conceptual cyber-physical infrastructure model for future grids is proposed (Section 3). This paper discusses several promising application domains of Blockchain in future energy systems (Section 4). These conceptual model and application scenarios are likely to provide references to relevant engineers and researchers, and can be used as a road-map for future researches.
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