Energy Management System for Community-Centered Off-Grid System with a Blockchain-Based P2P Energy Market

Abstract

Access to electricity is limited in Sub-Saharan African countries, with only 43% of the population having access, and the number is even lower, at 28% in rural areas. Connecting small remote villages to the national utility grid is not feasible due to long distances and high investment costs. Community-based off-grid systems using photo-voltaic and energy-storage technologies offer a solution for rural electrification. Due to the limited energy capacity in the system and variations in energy needs and consumption within the community members connected and supplied by the off-grid system, there needs to be democratized quota sharing between the connected households in place. This is attributed to the likelihood of uncontrolled depletion of energy resources from the system, and from other households by a user. In off-grid systems there could be cases where there is a certain amount of unused energy every day, which with quota sharing and local energy marketplace can potentially be sold to users with higher energy needs. When the available energy is used effectively, it impacts directly to the system’s business model and payback time. The paper presents the concept of an energy management system, which takes into account solar-powered off-grid system, and includes a blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) local energy market.