Application of block chain technologies in energy sector

Project Title:

Application of Block Chain Technologies in Energy Sector

Supervisor(s):

Prof Syed Islam, A/Prof Madhu Chetty Dr Mehmood Chadhar and Dr Suryani Lim

Contact person and email address:

Madhu Chetty, Madhu.chetty@federation.edu.au

A brief description of the project:

Block chains or distributed ledgers are an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. Numerous sources coming from these backgrounds identify block chains as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation.  Block chains could possibly offer solutions to challenges in the energy industry and applied to a variety of use cases related to the operations and business processes of energy companies, e.g. billing, sales and marketing trading and marketplace, automation, smart grid applications and data transfer, grid management, security and identify management, sharing of resources, etc. Since Renewable Energy Sources (RES) have undergone massive development in recent years, in this research, we propose to focus on block chain use case for “Grid Management”. The research will explore and develop new techniques in block chains for management of decentralised networks, flexibility services or asset management.  We will investigate integrated flexibility trading platforms and optimise flexible resources, which might otherwise lead to expensive network upgrades. In brief, the resulting impact of block chains on revenues and tariffs for power network use will be studied