Design and implementation of an open-Source IoT and blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading platform using ESP32-S2, Node-Red and, MQTT protocol

Abstract

An open-source P2P energy trading platform facilitates energy trading amongst the peers. The proposed system provides real time data acquisition, monitoring and control of self-generated energy at a remote location. The trading activities are done on a web interface that uses a private Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and the trading activities performed on the web interface are recorded on a tamper-proof blockchain network. An internet of things platform is used to monitor and control the self-generated energy. Energy data is collected and processed by means of ESP32-S2 microcontrollers using field instrumentation devices which are connected to the voltage source and load. An open-source decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading system, designed on the blockchain and internet of things (IoT) architecture is proposed. The hardware setup includes a relay, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, a Wi-Fi router and ESP32-S2 microcontroller. For data transfer the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is used over a local network. ESP32-S2 is set up as MQTT client and Node-Red IoT server is used as MQTT broker. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) request method is implemented to connect the Node-Red server with the web interface developed using React.JS library. The system design, implementation, testing, and results are presented in this paper.