Decentralized Data Management Privacy-Aware Framework for Positive Energy Districts

Abstract

Energy Transition (ET) needs actors to perform independent actions on multiple levels of governance. These actors may need to write and read their data, and at the same time they want to protect their data from unauthorized access. This is particularly the case for positive energy districts (PED), a growing trend in the EU that requires actors to perform, write and read operations on a neighborhood scale where governance competences are typically absent. This paper presents a decentralized privacy-aware data management framework that enables actors to store, read, and modify data in PEDs. Our framework design integrates blockchain with a Distributed Hash Table (DHT), role-based access control, ring signature, and different encryption techniques. The proposed framework stores encrypted data on the DHT, and metadata and hash key are sent to the blockchain, which allows the data owner to keep track of their data. The proposed framework components handle multi-level data access in PEDs and enable data security at run-time. Moreover, we show security and privacy analysis and performance evaluation in time overhead. The results show that the proposed solution is effective, secure, and scalable.

Exploring Decentralized Data Management: A Case Study of Changing Energy Suppliers in Germany

“…A study from Aslam et al [19] on data management in the context of local energy communities. The authors introduce a decentralized data management framework, integrating technologies like blockchain, Distributed Hash Table (DHT), role-based access control, and encryption.…”

“…They centralized data storage and allowed customer access through a web interface, with customer requests subsequently forwarded to relevant actors. Aslam et al [19] concentrated on small energy communities. They limited participant numbers to maintain reasonable calculation times within their blockchain architecture, a crucial factor for the efficiency of their system.…”