A general form of smart contract for decentralized energy systems management

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 formalise decentralisation. Two mechanisms were defined for agreement of control instructions for a Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) link connecting two separately operated 33kV 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 decentralising operating responsibilities within energy systems. 2 Main An energy system can be described as a collection of distinct networks, sources, sinks, their corresponding responsible parties, and the associated physical and information flows 1,2. The information flows come from monitoring physical processes (e.g. voltage and current at a transformer) and decisions made by individual actors 3. Information exchange interfaces are the mechanism by which information is passed between different responsible parties 4. The complexity of energy networks is forecast to increase with higher volumes of information and numbers of controllable components 5. When accompanied by decentralisation of responsibilities, this will lead to the creation of more information interfaces, or mean that more information must be processed at existing interfaces. An example of this, in electricity networks, is the possible transformation of Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) to Distribution System Operators (DSOs) in Great Britain (GB) 6,7. As part of the transition, more localised balancing responsibility would be given to DNOs 8,9. This would lead to a requirement for more complex agreements at interfaces (e.g. between two distribution networks or between a distribution network and a transmission network) as neighbouring parties will rely more on the predictable behaviour of adjacent networks 10. This leads us to ask what standardised rulesets at the interfaces between responsible parties, if any, would make the operation and planning of energy systems more secure and lower cost. The emergence of smart contract platforms (often under the rubric of Distributed Ledger Technology 11 or Blockchain Technology 12), brings the opportunity to securely automate many of the procedures that take place at interfaces and potentially to lower the whole system cost 11. The concept of smart contracts, self-enforcing agreements in the form of executable programs 13 , originating with Szabo in 1994 14 , provides a means of setting out negotiation and self-enforcing settlement rules that operate with a high degre...

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