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A general form of smart contract for decentralized energy systems management

Nature Energy volume 4, pages 140–149 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Smart contract platforms have the potential to allow shared automatic control of energy transfer within networks in a replicable, secure, verifiable and trustworthy way. Here we present a general form of smart contract which captures the elements needed for shared control that will help formalize decentralization. Two mechanisms were defined for agreement of control instructions for a medium-voltage direct-current (MVDC) link connecting two separately operated 33 kV distribution networks. These were instantiated as smart contracts and were evaluated in terms of cost and the computational requirements for their execution. Real network and converter data from the ANGLE-DC demonstration project were used to model the MVDC link. We demonstrate that using smart contracts to agree control instructions between different parties is feasible. The potential for shared control using smart contracts gives operators and regulators a way of defining and decentralizing operating responsibilities within energy systems.

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Fig. 1: General form of smart contract for shared control of an energy transfer process.
Fig. 2: Model architecture for the simulated smart contracts.
Fig. 3: A simplified example of the implemented rulesets for a given time window.
Fig. 4: Offers (bids) sent to the HCO smart contract.
Fig. 5: Ranked set-point preferences sent to the RPS smart contract.
Fig. 6: Overview of smart contract development and testing tools.
Fig. 7: Scaling of computational cost against number of bins for the HCO and RPS algorithms.
Fig. 8: The MVDC link operating points selected by the smart contracts.
Fig. 9: Modelled total network operation costs with shared control (relative to the case with no DC-link).

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Code availability

Information about the code used in this research, including how to access it, can be found in the Cardiff University data catalogue at https://doi.org/10.17035/d.2018.0064088749.

Data availability

Information about the modelled power network cost data used in this research, including how to access it, can be found in the Cardiff University data catalogue at https://doi.org/10.17035/d.2018.0064088749. The modelled power network cost data, allowing the results to be recreated, are also provided as Supplementary Data. Underlying electricity network data is the property of Scottish Power Energy Networks and is not available via Cardiff University.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with the support of the EPSRC HubNet: ‘Blockchain based smart contracts for peer to peer energy trading using the GB smart metering system’ (EP/N030028/1), EPSRC ENCORE ‘Feasibility of applying Blockchain and smart contracts technology to distribution grid management in the GB power system’ (EP/N010019/1), and EPSRC Reconfigurable Distribution Networks project (EP/K036327/1). The researchers would like to acknowledge and thank the funders. The authors acknowledge and thank Scottish Power Energy Networks, who provided the data needed for this research. Finally, the authors thank K. Rucinska for her review and improvement of the Abstract.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Lee Thomas, Yue Zhou, Chao Long, Jianzhong Wu & Nick Jenkins

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  1. Lee Thomas
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Contributions

L.T. conceived the paper, wrote the code and drafted the manuscript. Y.Z. conceived the RPS rules, formally defined the negotiation rules in the Methods, and made improvements to the manuscript. C.L. performed the cost analysis of the electricity networks, wrote up the relevant part of the Methods, and made improvements to the manuscript. J.W. and N.J. made improvements to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lee Thomas.

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Competing interests

L.T. has a small number of Ether, the token used by the Ethereum platform. The remaining authors have no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Data 1

The modelled power network cost data

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Thomas, L., Zhou, Y., Long, C. et al. A general form of smart contract for decentralized energy systems management. Nat Energy 4, 140–149 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0317-7

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