Automated Negotiation of Smart Contracts for Utility Exchanges between Prosumers in Eco-Industrial Parks

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Markets of prosumers trading utility surpluses (e.g., heating, cooling, or electric power) is a plausible realization of industrial symbiosis for companies in Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) in order to reach significant economic benefits and cut emissions. Through the synergistic co-generation and trading of utilities and industrial services, a P2P Market design makes room for socially desirable behavior despite the inherent selfish nature of each prosumer company. In this paper, a P2P Market prototype for the automated negotiation of utilities between prosumers in an EIP is proposed as a mechanism design to encourage prosumers to participate in trading surpluses. Blockchain transactions and Smart Contracts, combined with Internet of Things (IoTs) technology such as smart meters, are the implementation means to secure that the terms of exchange agreed upon will be automatically enforced. During the simulation of the EIP, each prosumer (represented by a negotiation agent) chooses whether to negotiate with another prosumer or to buy or sell its surpluses to a traditional service provider, such as a main electric power service provider or a gas provider, according to a previously learned policy while considering the context it is immersed in. Utilities between prosumers are exchanged based on a digital currency, the token, which could be readily implemented over Ethereum/Solidity platforms. Smart contract negotiations between prosumers revolve around agreeing (or not) on the price expressed in tokens of a utility profile, given the private and public information available to different parties. Simulation results highlight how automated negotiations allow prosumers to reach higher profits in the P2P Market from trading utility surpluses.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

An Industrial Prototype of Trusted Energy Performance Contracts Using Blockchain Technologies

International audienceEnergy conservation measurements in buildings are more and more popular as they benefit from an intelligent contractual framework called Energy Performance Contracts (EPC), where energy savings are measured as the difference between a predictive baseline model and the actual consumption. While modern predictive models make use of large amounts of data from external sources and increasingly complex algorithms, these two aspects make their use difficult in practice because they need mutual understanding and transparency, requiring the involvement of a third-party for auditing. In this sense, we designed and developed a prototype that overcomes these issues by storing the predictive models and the data in an immutable blockchained data structure using the Ethereum framework. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first working prototype using the blockchain technology applied to EPCs. This paper presents and discusses the technical solutions and best-practice guidelines adopted in this prototype