Blockchain-Enabled Energy Demand Side Management Cap and Trade Model

Alain Aoun, Hussein Ibrahim, Mazen Ghandour and Adrian Ilinca
Additional contact information
Alain Aoun: Department of Mathematics Computer Science and Engineering, Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), Rimouski, QC G5L 3A1, Canada
Hussein Ibrahim: Technology Institute of Industrial Maintenance (ITMI), 175 Rue de la Vérendrye, Cégep de Sept-Îles, Sept-lles, QC G4R 5B7, Canada
Mazen Ghandour: Faculty of Engineering, Lebanese University, Beirut 6573/14, Lebanon
Adrian Ilinca: Department of Mathematics Computer Science and Engineering, Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), Rimouski, QC G5L 3A1, Canada

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-26

Abstract: Global economic growth, demographic explosion, digitization, increased mobility, and greater demand for heating and cooling due to climate change in different world areas are the main drivers for the surge in energy demand. The increase in energy demand is the basis of economic challenges for power companies alongside several socio-economic problems in communities, such as energy poverty, defined as the insufficient coverage of energy needs, especially in the residential sector. Two main strategies are considered to meet this increased demand. The first strategy focuses on new sustainable and eco-friendly modes of power generation, such as renewable energy resources and distributed energy resources. The second strategy is demand-side oriented rather than the supply side. Demand-side management, demand response (DR), and energy efficiency (EE) programs fall under this category. On the other hand, the decentralization and digitization of the energy sector convoyed by the emersion of new technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), opened the door to new solutions for the energy demand dilemma. Among these technologies, blockchain has proved itself as a decentralized trading platform between untrusted peers without the involvement of a trusted third party. This newly introduced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading model can be used to create a new demand load control model. In this article, the concept of an energy cap and trade demand-side management (DSM) model is introduced and simulated. The introduced DSM model is based on the concept of capping consumers’ monthly energy consumption and rewarding consumers who do not exceed this cap with energy tradeable credits that can be traded using blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading. A model based on 200 households is used to simulate the proposed DSM model and prove that this model can be beneficial to both energy companies and consumers.

Keywords: energy; cap and trade; blockchain; demand-side management; energy policy; energy trading (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: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/24/8600/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/24/8600/ (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:14:y:2021:i:24:p:8600-:d:707064

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 ().