An Architecture for Blockchain based Peer to Peer Energy Trading

Peer to peer energy trading (P2P ET) is expected to be one of the key elements of the next generation power systems. Existing centralized grid systems face several challenges to support P2P ET such as single point of failure, communication overhead, security and privacy problems. Blockchain based P2P ET has been suggested by many researchers as a possible solution to the aforementioned problems. In this paper, we propose P2P ET architecture that allows performing secure energy trading without compromising system efficiency. The proposed architecture consists of three layers: Blockchain layer, Off-Blockchain communication layer and Physical layer. We describe the components of each layer along with interactions that exist between them to achieve the overall objectives. Moreover, we explain how the proposed architecture can achieve a better performance.