Break down the decentralization-security-privacy trilemma in management of distributed energy systems

Distributed energy systems encompass a diverse range of generation and storage solutions on the user side, where decentralized management schemes to maximize the overall social welfare are preferred considering their dispersed ownership. However, either security or privacy problems occur in recently proposed schemes. Here we report a decentralized framework leveraging the strengths of blockchain and parallelizable mathematical algorithms to overcome these potential drawbacks. The system owners bid cost functions and operating constraints through masked but coupled management subproblems, which are redistributed by the blockchain to be verifiably solved by competent peers. Such processes are iteratively executed as decisions and shadow prices are exchanged among participants, until an equilibrium is reached. The interactive framework ensures decentralized, privacy-preserving, and secure management of multiple energy sources, and reduces the total cost by 3.0–7.5% in the test system. Our results benefit the energy prosumers and promote a more active and competitive power grid.

Qinghan Sun, Huan Ma, Tian Zhao, Yonglin Xin, Qun Chen