Microgrid Transactive Energy: Review, Architectures, Distributed Ledger Technologies, and Market Analysis

Abstract

Prosumer concept and digitilization offer the exciting potential of microgrid transactive energy systems at distribution level for reducing transmission losses, decreasing electric infrastructure expenditure, improving reliability, enhancing local energy use, and minimizing customers' electricity bills. Distributed energy resources, demand response, distributed ledger technologies, and local energy markets are integral parts of transaction energy system for emergence of decentralized smart grid system. Hence, this paper discusses transactive energy concept and proposes seven functional layers architecture for designing transactive energy system. The proposed architecture is compared with practical case study of Brooklyn microgrid. Moreover, this paper reviews the existing architectures and explains the widely known distributed ledger technologies (blockchain, directed acyclic graph, hashgraph, holochain, and tempo) alongwith their advantages and challenges. The local energy market concept is presented and critically analyzed for energy trade within a transactive energy system. This paper also reviews the potential and challenges of peer-topeer and community-based energy markets. Proposed architecture and analytical review of distributed ledger technologies and local energy markets pave the way for advanced research and industrialization of transactive energy systems. INDEX TERMS Blockchain, decentralization, demand response, distributed ledger technologies, energy trading, local energy market, microgrid, peer-to-peer market, prosumer, renewable energy sources, smart grid, system architectures, transactive energy.

Transactive Energy Market for Energy Management in Microgrids: The Monash Microgrid Case Study

“…Research in the field of TEM design for microgrids is just gaining momentum, and literature in this field is still emerging. A review of recent discussions on architectures, distributed ledger technologies, and local markets for microgrid transactive energy is presented in Reference [21], in which functional layers for designing transactive energy systems are discussed. Abrishambaf et al [22] review research and industrial works on transactive energy and provide a classification of transactive energy system based on their application in network management, transactive control, and peer-to-peer markets.…”

Paving the Path for Two-Sided Energy Markets: An Overview of Different Approaches

“…A taxonomy for the classification of the TE concepts related to the latest advances in TE technology has been provided in [30]. Extensive review of architectures, distributed ledger technologies, and local energy markets for TE-based microgrids is presented in [31]. The work presented in [32] reviewed distributed ledger technology and its application for TE systems.…”

“…In the literature, several frameworks have been proposed for TE systems, which each of those includes a few fundamental elements. A seven-layer architecture for designing TE systems is proposed in [31], in which users, network, system operator, market, distributed ledger, communication, and regulation are considered as the key functional layers of the system. The proposed architecture in [32] has three main layers, namely, user layer, communication layer and the aggregator owned data center.…”

Analysis and Sizing of Mini-Grid Hybrid Renewable Energy System for Islands

“…Some research works have assessed the techno-economic feasibility and usage capacity of various hybrid system configurations in remote locations [12], [29]- [32]. On the other hand, sizing and optimization of a hybrid renewable based farm in a stand-alone context and the market analysis related to demand side management have been the issues considered in different scholars [33], [34]. Table 1 describes some of the hybrid energy systems with various storage technologies and efficiency assessment requirements found in the literature [3].…”