Cost Analysis of Blockchains-based Peer to Peer Energy Trade

Blockchain is a promising platform for peer to peer energy trade as it lowers the cost of trade by eliminating 3rd parties to mediate among the prosumers. However, blockchain brings the cost in terms of computational resources used in mining blockchain transactions. The objective of this paper is to develop a method of a cost analysis of blockchain-based peer to peer energy trade systems as we analyze the tradeoff among the cost of the blockchain network, the appropriate throughput of the blockchain, and profit from the cheap energy price provided by a prosumer to another prosumer. We identify the factors which will lead to profitable blockchain-based peer to peer energy trade markets.