Blockchain-Based Smart Energy Communities: Operation of Smart Legal Contract

Abstract

The Blockchain paradigm applied to energy communities represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Indeed, it introduces a new framework to manage the communities’ services and, in the meantime, guarantees the traceability of the energy produced and consumed, informing consumers of the origins and costs of their supply, making tariffs more transparent with the result of promoting energy flexibility. Blockchain enables a real digitalization of the energy sector. The security of the transaction and the guarantee that the platform on which an energy network is based cannot be tampered with has prompted energy communities to start a blockchain-based system. The paper proposed a blockchain-based open and transparent ecosystem for smart energy communities within, different and several actors interfacing thanks to blockchain system and its services interact in a natural and disintermediate way. It allows, in a peer to peer (p2p) way, to implement participatory logic aimed at reducing and self-consumption of energy and direct participation citizens to the electricity system. A proof of concept is created and tested using the Trakti blockchain platform (scalable) that, through an end-to-end approach, implement a new dynamic smart legal contract with real data for the local marketplace within a smart energy community. The results show that the new smart Legal Contract makes it possible to define an energy token, which allows remunerating the energy exchanges in communities between producers and consumers within a smart grid and converting the energy into community services.