Abstract
A growing demand in sustainable energy harvested from renewable resources, such as wind or solar power, leads to new challenges in the electricity grid, which in future is also referred to as the smart grid. This also reflects in a more decentralized and diverse energy market. In such a market, prices do not only depend on production and demand, but also the source of energy production influences the price. In this paper, we present a decentralized and permission-less system for issuing, receiving and verifying Green Energy Certificates for kWh Ownership (GECKO) similar to the established Renewable Energy Certificates or Green Tags. These certificates allow to create a market for renewable energy. While the established system is designed for the wholesale market and does not allow for decentralized and permission-less verification, the proposed system is built on a blockchain-based approach and allows for the management and transfer of certificates. In our exemplary use case, Distribution System Operators (DSO) act as certification authority for privately or community owned power plants in regional energy markets. Customers can easily verify the integrity of such certificates without relying on a trusted third party or escrow service.
Highlights
Following national and international legislation (Morthorst 2003; European Comm 2017), the use of renewable energy and resources, such as wind and solar power, is of increasing interest for both, customers and utility companies
(2020) 3:2 these constraints, the existing scheme is not suitable for local energy markets where customers act as producers and consumers, given distributed energy resources such as small and privately or community owned wind, water or solar power plants
Our key contribution to achieve the aforementioned properties is twofold: (i) first, we set up a web of trust between certification authorities, which are the Distribution System Operators (DSOs); (ii) second, we show how these authorities certify power plants and how the certificates for kWh produced from these power plants can be traded and transferred, such that consumers can verify the integrity of the certificate
Summary
Following national and international legislation (Morthorst 2003; European Comm 2017), the use of renewable energy and resources, such as wind and solar power, is of increasing interest for both, customers and utility companies. With GECKO, an approach is presented that builds on the concept of verifiable green energy in the form of non-tangible certificates, but addresses local networks and neighborhood markets in a decentralized smart grid. For each kWh generated from such a certified power plant, a producer creates a new certificate and writes an event to the blockchain.
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