Project Overview

Renewable, distributed, and micro (RDM) generators offer new opportunities for clean energy. But their intermittency and unpredictable power flows, all interacting in real time with each other and the carbon offsets market, can compromise voltage stability in power systems. Information, energy and offsets will flow between arbitrary parties in intricate patterns, and so a new and highly scalable IT fabric will be needed to coordinate all of these entities. Smart contracts, often implemented via permission of blockchains (which don’t incur exponential energy demands like Bitcoin) are one possible foundation for such a fabric. In this project, we will investigate the properties of blockchain-based smart contracts for peer-to-peer power delivery.