Blockchain-based demand response using prosumer scheduling

Abstract Today, with the increasing penetration of intermittent renewables, the need for flexibility is growing. This is due to increased power output variations from renewables and simultaneous shutdown of traditional fossil fuel-based power plants that previously have been used to provide different technical ancillary services for the power systems. Therefore, there is an increased risk of voltage and frequency stability issues as new solutions for providing these technical flexibility services are not developed for future smart grids. One of the most potential and cost-efficient flexibility resources to provide the needed balancing services is customer demand response. However, customers should have enough motivation to incur discomfort cost by reacting to the price signals. Demand response programs aim to incentivize customers to reshape their demand in response to the market prices. This chapter introduces a decentralized price-based demand response program in which customers, especially prosumers, can manage their consumption. They are proposed to have the opportunity to reshape their demand to react to the local market price. Blockchain technology is adopted as a platform so that prosumers can trade energy with each other, eliminating the need for a broker. Finally the results of the proposed model are compared with those of aggregator-based model, and the effect of prosumers on the market load profile is discussed.