Comparative evaluation and simulation of blockchain consensus mechanisms for secure and scalable peer to peer energy trading in microgrids

Abstract

Integration of renewable-energy (RE) sources of energy into local microgrids, decentralised energy markets using blockchain based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is gaining more traction due to its ability to enable transparent, autonomous, and secure transactions among distributed energy resources (DERs). Due to the large variety in microgrid topologies and their respective operational constraints, a key challenge to obtaining the most effective trading framework is the choice of blockchain consensus protocol that suits a given microgrid type. Choice of consensus mechanism solely affects the reliability and security of a network. This paper presents a quantitative comprehensive evaluation of various blockchain consensus mechanisms such as Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS), Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS), Proof-of-Elapsed-Time (PoET), Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), Raft, and Tendermint to determine their suitability for P2P energy trading in microgrids. Various metrics such as fault tolerance, energy efficiency, latency, throughput and consensus time were evaluated for multiple consensus mechanisms through simulations. This paper also studies node-scaling impact on the protocols and presents a final decision framework to match the suitable protocol with various microgrid topologies.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham IN
• Zhejiang University CN

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