Design of a Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Platform Using Multilayered Semi-Permissioned Blockchain

Abstract

A secured and scalable Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading platform can facilitate the integration of renewable energy and thus contribute to building sustainable energy infrastructure. The decentralized architecture of blockchain makes it a befitting candidate to actualize an efficient P2P energy trading market. However, for a sustainable and dynamic blockchain-based P2P energy trading platform, few critical aspects such as security, privacy and scalability need to be addressed with high priority. This paper proposes a blockchain-based solution for energy trading among the consumers which ensures the systems’ security, protects users’ privacy, and improves the overall scalability. More specifically, we develop a multilayered semi-permissioned blockchain-based platform to facilitate energy transactions. The practical byzantine fault tolerant algorithm is employed as the underlying consensus for verification and validation of transactions which ensures the system’s tolerance against internal error and malicious attacks. Additionally, we introduce the idea of quality of transaction (QoT)—a reward system for the participants of the network that eventually helps determine the participant’s eligibility for future transactions. The resiliency of the framework against the transaction malleability attack is demonstrated with two uses cases. Finally, a qualitative analysis is presented to indicate the system’s usefulness in improving the overall security, privacy, and scalability of the network.