Design and evaluation of a blockchain-integrated BIS for decentralized energy management

Motivation: Local energy communities represent a compelling use case for Blockchain-based Information Systems (BISs), where mutually distrusting participants must share and verify energy data without relying on centralized authorities. However, integrating real-time IoT monitoring, photovoltaic (PV) generation modeling, and blockchain infrastructures raises challenges of scalability, governance, transparency, and data management. Objective: This study investigates the design of a BIS that integrates IoT-based energy monitoring, PV system simulation, and blockchain transaction management to provide a transparent, efficient, and fair framework for decentralized energy communities. Methods: This study presents a framework design and validation methodology that combines empirical monitoring with simulation-based assessment. Real household electricity consumption was monitored over six days using smart meters interfaced through MQTT to a Raspberry Pi. Photovoltaic generation was simulated using PVsyst with site-specific meteorological data 1642 kWh/m 2 . Energy surplus scenarios were modeled by combining measured consumption with simulated PV output and submitted to a Hyperledger Fabric network to measure transaction performance. Multiple blockchain platforms were evaluated against latency, throughput, energy overhead, and cost metrics. Results: Measured blockchain performance on operational hardware shows permissioned networks with PBFT consensus achieve 2 . 35 ± 0 . 11 second latency and 0 . 99 ± 0 . 07 % energy overhead for 10-household communities. Simulated PV optimization demonstrates that 35° panel tilt increases annual yield by 15.9% over a horizontal baseline (3877 kWh/year baseline; 4495 kWh/year optimised) with 75.1% performance ratio. Infrastructure costs are measured at 240 EUR/household for the validated 10-household baseline and projected to scale to 40 EUR/household at 60-household deployments through fixed cost distribution, with intermediate validation through Hyperledger Caliper simulations confirming sub-linear latency scaling to 20 households (2.68 ± 0.18 s). The 10-household configuration represents a pilot-scale baseline for controlled validation, with demonstrated architectural scalability through simulation. The framework validation demonstrates technical feasibility and quantifies design trade-offs in consensus selection, data management, and system optimization. Conclusion: This work contributes a reproducible validation framework for blockchain-based energy management systems, validated through controlled component testing prior to field deployment. The methodology addresses scalability, governance, and transparency challenges while offering practical design guidelines for implementing fair and efficient local energy communities.