DEAL: Differentially Private Auction for Blockchain-Based Microgrids Energy Trading

Modern smart homes are being equipped with certain renewable energy resources that can produce their own electric energy. From time to time, these smart homes or microgrids are also capable of supplying energy to other houses, buildings, or energy grid in the time of available self-produced renewable energy. Therefore, researches have been carried out to develop optimal trading strategies, and many recent technologies are also being used in combination with microgrids. One such technology is blockchain, which works over decentralized distributed ledger. In this paper, we develop a blockchain based approach for microgrid energy auction. To make this auction more secure and private, we use differential privacy technique, which ensures that no adversary will be able to infer private information of any participant with confidence. Furthermore, to reduce computational complexity at every trading node, we use consortium blockchain, in which selected nodes are given authority to add a new block in the blockchain. Finally, we develop differentially private Energy Auction for bLockchain-based microgrid systems (DEAL). We compare DEAL with Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction scenario and experimental results demonstrates that DEAL outperforms VCG mechanism by maximizing sellers’ revenue along with maintaining overall network benefit and social welfare.