Peer-to-peer trading is a next-generation energy management technique that economically benefits proactive consumers (prosumers) transacting their energy as goods and services. At the same time, peer-to-peer energy trading is also expected to help the grid by reducing peak demand, lowering reserve requirements, and curtailing network loss. However, large-scale deployment of peer-to-peer trading in electricity networks poses a number of challenges in modeling transactions in both the virtual and physical layers of the network. As such, this article provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art in research on peer-to-peer energy trading techniques. By doing so, we provide an overview of the key features of peer-to-peer trading and its benefits of relevance to the grid and prosumers. Then, we systematically classify the existing research in terms of the challenges that the studies address in the virtual and the physical layers. We then further identify and discuss those technical approaches that have been extensively used to address the challenges in peer-to-peer transactions. Finally, the paper is concluded with potential future research directions.

Peer-to-Peer Trading in Electricity Networks: An Overview

The concept of smart grid has been introduced as a new vision of the conventional power grid to figure out an efficient way of integrating green and renewable energy technologies. In this way, Internet-connected smart grid, also called energy Internet, is also emerging as an innovative approach to ensure the energy from anywhere at any time. The ultimate goal of these developments is to build a sustainable society. However, integrating and coordinating a large number of growing connections can be a challenging issue for the traditional centralized grid system. Consequently, the smart grid is undergoing a transformation to the decentralized topology from its centralized form. On the other hand, blockchain has some excellent features which make it a promising application for smart grid paradigm. In this paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive survey on application of blockchain in smart grid. As such, we identify the significant security challenges of smart grid scenarios that can be addressed by blockchain. Then, we present a number of blockchain-based recent research works presented in different literatures addressing security issues in the area of smart grid. We also summarize several related practical projects, trials, and products that have been emerged recently. Finally, we discuss essential research challenges and future directions of applying blockchain to smart grid security issues.

Blockchain for Future Smart Grid: A Comprehensive Survey

Electricity demand during pandemic times: the case of the COVID-19 in Spain

The implementation of mobility restrictions and home office schemes due to the COVID-19 pandemic have influenced electricity consumption patterns and levels This study analyzes the effect of physical distancing measures regarding mobility on the energy consumption trends for the Brazilian energy system and its subsystems (Northeast, North, South, and Southeast-Midwest) Trends were evaluated by the Joinpoint software, and the analysis comprehended the period between January 1 and May 27, 2020 Daily load data was grouped into weeks, with the calculation of weekly percentage changes considering a 95% confidence interval andp < 0 05 The weekly electricity loads were compared in the periods before and after the isolation decrees were enforced in Brazil (March 15, 2020) Statistically significant decreases were observed in the levels of electricity consumption, with trends represented by two joinpoints Due to the different profiles of consumption across the geographic regions, the resulting electricity dynamics were also different This is the first study to employ joinpoint analysis for the calculation of energy consumption trends focusing on the COVID-29 pandemic Data presented herein is unique, in its focus on Brazil, which enables more accurate implications to be drawn for Brazilian policy makers

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/er.5877

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian electricity consumption patterns

The concept of smart grid has been introduced as a new vision of the conventional power grid to figure out an efficient way of integrating green and renewable energy technologies. In this way, Internet-connected smart grid, also called energy Internet, is also emerging as an innovative approach to ensure the energy from anywhere at any time. The ultimate goal of these developments is to build a sustainable society. However, integrating and coordinating a large number of growing connections can be a challenging issue for the traditional centralized grid system. Consequently, the smart grid is undergoing a transformation to the decentralized topology from its centralized form. On the other hand, blockchain has some excellent features which make it a promising application for the smart grid paradigm. In this article, we aim to provide a comprehensive survey on the application of blockchain in smart grid. As such, we identify the significant security challenges of smart grid scenarios that can be addressed by blockchain. Then, we present a number of blockchain-based recent research works presented in different literature addressing security issues in the area of smart grid. We also summarize several related practical projects, trials, and products that have emerged recently. Finally, we discuss essential research challenges and future directions of applying blockchain to smart grid security issues.

At the moment of writing, in Italy, there is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Its outbreak is leading to severe global socioeconomic disruptions impacting on all economic sectors from tourism, industry and the tertiary sector, up to the operational and opening of public offices, the closure of schools and the organization of families. Measures adopted by the Italian government to deal with the COVID-19 emergency have had direct effects both on people’s daily lives and on the activity of most industrial and commercial production companies. These changes have been unequivocally reflected also on the Italian electricity system, which has shown unprecedented behavior in terms of both energy consumption and volume—and subsequently, in the observed share of renewable and conventional production technologies. The goal of this study is to show the impact on the power industry of all the restrictions and lockdown of the activities in Italy and to discuss the effects of COVID-19 outbreak on the bulk power system and the entire electricity sector. In particular, the consequences on load profiles, electricity consumption and market prices in Italy, including the environmental aspects, are examined.

Impact on Electricity Consumption and Market Pricing of Energy and Ancillary Services during Pandemic of COVID-19 in Italy

The newest Distributed Ledger Technology platforms, which delegate the execution of complex tasks in the form of Smart Contracts, make it possible to devise novel local electricity market frameworks, which are performed in a fully automated fashion. This paper proposes a novel fully automated platform for energy and ancillary service markets in distribution networks, able to run in a decentralized fashion, bypassing the need for a physical central authority. The proposed platform, able to perform the role of Virtual Decentralized Market Authority, shows excellent potential applications in the management of local ancillary service markets in local energy communities of various sizes. The proposed Virtual Decentralized Market Authority showed reasonable running costs and comparable technical management capabilities with respect to a physical, centralized managing authority.

/pdf/distributed-ledger-technologies-for-peer-to-peer-local-1cvftssi3w.pdf

Distributed ledger technologies for peer-to-peer local markets in distribution networks

This paper suggests an application of blockchain as an energy open data ledger, designed to save and track data regarding the energy footprint of public buildings and public energy communities. The developed platform permits writing energy production and consumption of public buildings using blockchain-enabled smart meters. Once authenticated on the blockchain, this data can be made available to the public domain for techno-economic analyses for either research studies and internal or third parties audits, increasing, in this way, the perceived transparency of the public institutions. A further feature of the platform, starting on the previously disclosed raw data, allows calculating, validating, and sharing sustainability indicators of public buildings and facilities, allowing the tracking of their improvements in sustainability goals. The paper also provides the preliminary results of a field-test experimentation of the proposed platform on a group of public buildings, highlighting the possible benefits of its widespread exploitation.

Energy Blockchain for Public Energy Communities

The progressive development of local energy communities requires the reorganization of the energy production and consumption, with a new energy system in which the technical and commercial decision-making process need to be decentralized from central authorities to distributed entities properly coordinated. This will be increasingly aided by the spread of IoT systems capable of interacting among distributed resources. The technical and commercial energy management burden will be then shared among cooperating IoT devices, which will perform the necessary optimization and control operations. In this context, a Decentralized Genetic Algorithm (DGA) methodology, able to perform a wide spectrum of power system optimizations in a fully decentralized fashion is introduced. This paper aim at developing a DGA management procedure, tested considering a model for a local energy market and an automated distributed resource scheduling in a local energy community. The testing is performed through a HIL experimental setup, which proves the effectiveness of the methodology proposed, as well as a Blockchain platform

A Decentralized Market Solver for Local Energy Communities

In city contexts it is common to encounter entire urban districts with poor energy performances buildings, where urban and building retrofitting can be carried out ranging from light to radical transformation. Taking into account that the Clean energy package for All Europeans, which defines European climate and energy policy beyond 2020, encourages the Member States to develop policies, financial measures, and other tools for the promotion of strategies that can lead to building renovation, this paper wants to provide a multi-energy planning methodology for an entire urban neighborhood. The development of a district's multi-energy smart grid has been planned with the objective of increasing the local production from local renewable thermal and electrical energy to decrease the gap between energy production and consumption of the district. The investment cost is considered as objective for multi-energy system optimization. The proposed methodology is applied to an existing urban district in the City of Cagliari (Italy) considering different retrofitting scenarios. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Marco Galici

Papers

Impact on Electricity Consumption and Market Pricing of Energy and Ancillary Services during Pandemic of COVID-19 in Italy

Distributed ledger technologies for peer-to-peer local markets in distribution networks

Energy Blockchain for Public Energy Communities

A Decentralized Market Solver for Local Energy Communities

Multi-Energy Planning of Urban District Retrofitting