P2PEdge: A Decentralised, Scalable P2P Architecture for Energy Trading in Real-Time

Abstract

Current Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy market models raise serious concerns regarding the confidentiality and integrity of energy consumption, trading and billing data. While Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) systems (e.g., blockchain) have been proposed to enhance security, an attacker could damage other parts of the model, such as its infrastructure: an adversarial attacker could target the communication between entities by, e.g., eavesdropping or modifying data. The main goal of this paper is to propose a model for a decentralised P2P marketplace for trading energy, which addresses the problem of developing security and privacy-aware environments. Additionally, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture is presented with a focus on security and sustainability. In order to propose a solution to DLT’s scalability issues (i.e., through transaction confirmation delays), off-chain state channels are considered for the energy negotiation and resolution processes. Additionally, a STRIDE (spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege) security analysis is conducted within the context of the proposed model to identify potential vulnerabilities.

A DLT-based Smart Contract Architecture for Atomic and Scalable Trading

“…Blockchain [1] as the most well-known DLT is a globally distributed ledger system that can use different consensus algorithms among untrustworthy network participants [7], [22], [23]. The participants are displayed by distributed nodes that can send, store, and verify data.…”

“…Private systems restrict their access to authorised participants while public systems do not have any access restrictions. Note that small systems (e.g., private permissioned systems) might be prone to attacks (e.g., 51% attack) due to a fewer number of available nodes [22].…”

“…While public-key cryptography can provide security and a consensus algorithm can add immutability that prohibit fraud and double-spending [20], [26], other aspects, however, remain problematic for blockchain-based models [22]. Two major problems with the technology are scalability and privacy leakage [23].…”

“…A wide-known application for channels is to accelerate payment networks such as Bitcoin's Lightning Network [8] or Ethereum with the Raiden network [21]. Furthermore, several academic proposals [11], [12], [20], [22] propose the extension of channels to a broader range of applications as they can provide various advantages such as minimising transaction fees, protecting against full collusion, and increasing the scalability of the network (as transactions are processed offchain and their limiting factor is only the latency between the parties).…”

Drivers and Challenges of Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Development in Thailand

“…More prototypes, laboratory platforms, and tools are needed to enable the research society to validate the performance of models that can support P2P trading implementation on a large scale. However, for the trading platform that aims to extend the covered area, scalability must be primarily considered when designing a trading structure and platform [73,103,104]. The platform requires the considerations of technical and financial issues, such as data security and privacy, speed of financial transactions, resilience, and energy balance, to support the increasing number of customers participating in P2P markets [105].…”