Blockchain for smart grid resilience: Exchanging distributed energy at speed, scale and security
01 Sep 2017-pp 18-23
TL;DR: The application of blockchain and smart contracts to improve smart grid cyber resiliency and secure transactive energy applications is explored.
Abstract: Blockchain may help solve several complex problems related to securing the integrity and trustworthiness of rapid, distributed, complex energy transactions and data exchanges. In a move towards grid resilience, blockchain commoditizes trust and enables automated smart contracts to support auditable multiparty transactions based on predefined rules between distributed energy providers and customers. Blockchain based smart contracts also help remove the need to interact with third-parties, facilitating the adoption and monetization of distributed energy transactions and exchanges, both energy flows as well as financial transactions. This may help reduce transactive energy costs and increase the security and sustainability of distributed energy resource (DER) integration, helping to remove barriers to a more decentralized and resilient power grid. This paper explores the application of blockchain and smart contracts to improve smart grid cyber resiliency and secure transactive energy applications.
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TL;DR: This work provides a comprehensive overview of fundamental principles that underpin blockchain technologies, such as system architectures and distributed consensus algorithms, and discusses opportunities, potential challenges and limitations for a number of use cases, ranging from emerging peer-to-peer energy trading and Internet of Things applications, to decentralised marketplaces, electric vehicle charging and e-mobility.
Abstract: Blockchains or distributed ledgers are an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. Numerous sources coming from these backgrounds identify blockchains as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation. Blockchains promise transparent, tamper-proof and secure systems that can enable novel business solutions, especially when combined with smart contracts. This work provides a comprehensive overview of fundamental principles that underpin blockchain technologies, such as system architectures and distributed consensus algorithms. Next, we focus on blockchain solutions for the energy industry and inform the state-of-the-art by thoroughly reviewing the literature and current business cases. To our knowledge, this is one of the first academic, peer-reviewed works to provide a systematic review of blockchain activities and initiatives in the energy sector. Our study reviews 140 blockchain research projects and startups from which we construct a map of the potential and relevance of blockchains for energy applications. These initiatives were systematically classified into different groups according to the field of activity, implementation platform and consensus strategy used. 1 Opportunities, potential challenges and limitations for a number of use cases are discussed, ranging from emerging peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, to decentralised marketplaces, electric vehicle charging and e-mobility. For each of these use cases, our contribution is twofold: first, in identifying the technical challenges that blockchain technology can solve for that application as well as its potential drawbacks, and second in briefly presenting the research and industrial projects and startups that are currently applying blockchain technology to that area. The paper ends with a discussion of challenges and market barriers the technology needs to overcome to get past the hype phase, prove its commercial viability and finally be adopted in the mainstream.
1,399Â citations
Cites background from "Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..."
...plex data exchanges in distributed generation applications is also the main focus of Guardtime, a research project funded by the Department of Energy, US [79]....
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...prompted several authors to speak about novel market models and energy democratisation [79]....
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...increasingly decentralised complex energy systems and microgrids [15,79,80]....
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...Mylrea and Gourisetti [79] argue that aggregation of multiple blockchain users to comply with grid reliability...
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...Mylrea and Gupta [79] focus on technical characteristics (security, scalability and speed) of blockchains for distributed energy resources (DER) transaction exchanges and enhanced resilience....
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TL;DR: A comprehensive classification of blockchain-enabled applications across diverse sectors such as supply chain, business, healthcare, IoT, privacy, and data management is presented, and key themes, trends and emerging areas for research are established.
1,310Â citations
TL;DR: This paper reviews the literature, tabulate, and summarize the emerging blockchain applications, platforms, and protocols specifically targeting AI area, and identifies and discusses open research challenges of utilizing blockchain technologies for AI.
Abstract: Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain have become two of the most trending and disruptive technologies. Blockchain technology has the ability to automate payment in cryptocurrency and to provide access to a shared ledger of data, transactions, and logs in a decentralized, secure, and trusted manner. Also with smart contracts, blockchain has the ability to govern interactions among participants with no intermediary or a trusted third party. AI, on the other hand, offers intelligence and decision-making capabilities for machines similar to humans. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on blockchain applications for AI. We review the literature, tabulate, and summarize the emerging blockchain applications, platforms, and protocols specifically targeting AI area. We also identify and discuss open research challenges of utilizing blockchain technologies for AI.
570Â citations
Cites background from "Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..."
...data item from the blockchain within the next second [114]....
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...information for an agent to transfer information in a secure manner [114]....
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...Optimization and security issues in the energy grid can be resolved and improved by blockchain by providing a verifiable distributed ledger which helps in improving transparency and integrity in the energy delivery sector [114]....
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...Mylrea and Gourisetti [114] discuss how AI-enabled...
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...Mylrea and Gourisetti [114] have explored how blockchain technology could possibly modernize and automate energy and IoT infrastructure toward a stable system....
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TL;DR: The review reveals that several opportunities are available for utilizing blockchain in various industrial sectors; however, there are still some challenges to be addressed to achieve better utilization of this technology.
Abstract: Blockchain technologies have recently come to the forefront of the research and industrial communities as they bring potential benefits for many industries. This is due to their practical capabilities in solving many issues currently inhibiting further advances in various industrial domains. Securely recording and sharing transactional data, establishing automated and efficient supply chain processes, and enhancing transparency across the whole value chain are some examples of these issues. Blockchain offers an effective way to tackle these issues using distributed, shared, secure, and permissioned transactional ledgers. The employment of blockchain technologies and the possibility of applying them in different situations enables many industrial applications through increased efficiency and security; enhanced traceability and transparency; and reduced costs. In this paper, different industrial application domains where the use of blockchain technologies has been proposed are reviewed. This paper explores the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of incorporating blockchain in different industrial applications. Furthermore, the paper attempts to identify the requirements that support the implementation of blockchain for different industrial applications. The review reveals that several opportunities are available for utilizing blockchain in various industrial sectors; however, there are still some challenges to be addressed to achieve better utilization of this technology.
363Â citations
Cites background from "Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..."
...potential to reduce energy costs [55] as well as increase resiliency [56]....
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TL;DR: There is real potential for DLT to support digitalisation in the construction industry and enable solutions to many of its challenges, but there needs to be further investigation of the readiness of the industry, its organisations and processes, and to evaluate what changes need to occur before implementation can be successful.
307Â citations
Cites background from "Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..."
...Internet of Things (IoT) devices coupled with smart contracts running on DLT are reducing congestion and faults related to distribution and demand management is being revolutionised through monitoring using sensor technologies (Mylrea and Gourisetti, 2017; Pieroni et al., 2018; Pop et al., 2018) that regulate power usage automatically through smart contracts and/or inform homeowners of their usage allowing them to make sustainable changes to their energy consumption and lifestyle choices (Hwang et al....
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References
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TL;DR: The conclusion is that the blockchain-IoT combination is powerful and can cause significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
Abstract: Motivated by the recent explosion of interest around blockchains, we examine whether they make a good fit for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. Blockchains allow us to have a distributed peer-to-peer network where non-trusting members can interact with each other without a trusted intermediary, in a verifiable manner. We review how this mechanism works and also look into smart contracts—scripts that reside on the blockchain that allow for the automation of multi-step processes. We then move into the IoT domain, and describe how a blockchain-IoT combination: 1) facilitates the sharing of services and resources leading to the creation of a marketplace of services between devices and 2) allows us to automate in a cryptographically verifiable manner several existing, time-consuming workflows. We also point out certain issues that should be considered before the deployment of a blockchain network in an IoT setting: from transactional privacy to the expected value of the digitized assets traded on the network. Wherever applicable, we identify solutions and workarounds. Our conclusion is that the blockchain-IoT combination is powerful and can cause significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
3,129Â citations
"Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..." refers background in this paper
...Blockchain provides a unique path for a more decentralized and resilient integration of Energy Internet of Things (E-IoT) and grid edge devices as proven in some recent use cases and studies [5, 6]....
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22 May 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present Hawk, a decentralized smart contract system that does not store financial transactions in the clear on the blockchain, thus retaining transactional privacy from the public's view.
Abstract: Emerging smart contract systems over decentralized cryptocurrencies allow mutually distrustful parties to transact safely without trusted third parties. In the event of contractual breaches or aborts, the decentralized blockchain ensures that honest parties obtain commensurate compensation. Existing systems, however, lack transactional privacy. All transactions, including flow of money between pseudonyms and amount transacted, are exposed on the blockchain. We present Hawk, a decentralized smart contract system that does not store financial transactions in the clear on the blockchain, thus retaining transactional privacy from the public's view. A Hawk programmer can write a private smart contract in an intuitive manner without having to implement cryptography, and our compiler automatically generates an efficient cryptographic protocol where contractual parties interact with the blockchain, using cryptographic primitives such as zero-knowledge proofs. To formally define and reason about the security of our protocols, we are the first to formalize the blockchain model of cryptography. The formal modeling is of independent interest. We advocate the community to adopt such a formal model when designing applications atop decentralized blockchains.
1,523Â citations
Book•
07 May 2016
TL;DR: The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and its not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence, its called the blockchain, a new, distributed platform that can help reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better.
Abstract: The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and its not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence. Its called the blockchain. The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generationpowered by blockchain technologyis bringing us the Internet of value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolutionary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though its the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital currencies, the underlying framework has the potential to go far beyond these and record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certificates to insurance claims and even votes. Why should you care? Maybe youre a music lover who wants artists to make a living off their art. Or a consumer who wants to know where that hamburger meat really came from. Perhaps youre an immigrant whos sick of paying big fees to send money home to loved ones. Or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business. And those examples are barely the tip of the iceberg. This technology is public, encrypted, and readily available for anyone to use. Its already seeing widespread adoption in a number of areas. For example, forty-two (and counting) of the worlds biggest financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Credit Suisse, have formed a consortium to investigate the blockchain for speedier and more secure transactions. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, the blockchain will create winners and losers. And while opportunities abound, the risks of disruption and dislocation must not be ignored. Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and utterly foundational book about the future of the modern economy. Blockchain Revolution is the business leaders playbook for the next decade and beyond.
797Â citations
"Blockchain for smart grid resilienc..." refers background in this paper
...Blockchain is defined as a distributed data base or digital ledger that records transactions of value using a cryptographic signature that is inherently resistant to modification [1]....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: This work documents the experiences in teaching smart contract programming to undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, the first pedagogical attempt of its kind.
Abstract: We document our experiences in teaching smart contract programming to undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, the first pedagogical attempt of its kind. Since smart contracts deal directly with the movement of valuable currency units between contratual parties, security of a contract program is of paramount importance. Our lab exposed numerous common pitfalls in designing safe and secure smart contracts. We document several typical classes of mistakes students made, suggest ways to fix/avoid them, and advocate best practices for programming smart contracts. Finally, our pedagogical efforts have also resulted in online open course materials for programming smart contracts, which may be of independent interest to the community.
375Â citations
22 Feb 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors document their experiences in teaching smart contract programming to undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, the first pedagogical attempt of its kind, where smart contracts deal directly with the movement of valuable currency units between contractual parties, security of a contract program is of paramount importance.
Abstract: We document our experiences in teaching smart contract programming to undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, the first pedagogical attempt of its kind. Since smart contracts deal directly with the movement of valuable currency units between contractual parties, security of a contract program is of paramount importance.
337Â citations