P2P Energy Exchange Architecture for Swarm Electrification-Driven PV Communities

Abstract

Swarm electrification-driven communities face significant challenges, including implementing advanced distributed control in areas with limited ICT access and establishing trust among villagers hesitant to grant access to their assets. This paper proposes a distributed DC microgrid architecture for P2P energy exchange in these communities, ensuring stability and an effective exchange operation. By implementing a Blockchain marketplace specifically designed to suit the rural context, the proposed architecture ensures tracing of exchange transactions to fairly settle participants. Validation experiments demonstrate its efficacy in achieving peak shaving. It provides 11% of the requester’s total demand from the community even while maintaining the constraint of reducing discharge–charge cycles to one per day, thereby preserving battery life. Additionally, the solution reduces prosumer production losses by 16% of the total PV production.

Keywords

• swarm electrification
• rural PV communities
• DC microgrids
• Blockchain
• P2P energy exchange
• community-shared loads