Building a Community of Users for Open Market Energy

Joao C. Ferreira and Ana Lucia Martins
Additional contact information
Joao C. Ferreira: ISTAR-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa 1649-026, Portugal
Ana Lucia Martins: Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa 1649-026, Portugal

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-21

Abstract: Energy markets are based on energy transactions with a central control entity, where the players are companies. In this research work, we propose an IoT (Internet of Things) system for the accounting of energy flows, as well as a blockchain approach to overcome the need for a central control entity. This allows for the creation of local energy markets to handle distributed energy transactions without needing central control. In parallel, the system aggregates users into communities with target goals and creates new markets for players. These two approaches (blockchain and IoT) are brought together using a gamification approach, allowing for the creation and maintenance of a community for electricity market participation based on pre-defined goals. This community approach increases the number of market players and creates the possibility of traditional end users earning money through small coordinated efforts. We apply this approach to the aggregation of batteries from electrical vehicles so that they become a player in the spinning reserve market. It is also possible to apply this approach to local demand flexibility, associated with the demand response (DR) concept. DR is aggregated to allow greater flexibility in the regulation market based on an OpenADR approach that allows the turning on and off of predefined equipment to handle local microgeneration.

Keywords: blockchain; community; energy market; electric vehicle; Demand Response; gamification; microgeneration; renewable energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/9/2330/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/9/2330/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:11:y:2018:i:9:p:2330-:d:167663

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().