Barriers to blockchain-based decentralised energy trading: a systematic review

The increasing adoption of clean energy technologies, including solar and wind generation, demand response, energy efficiency, and energy storage (e.g. batteries and electric vehicles) have led to the evolution of the traditional electricity markets from centralised energy trading systems into Distributed Energy Trading (DET) systems. Consequently, savvy business executives are exploring how blockchain might impact their competitive advantage in the emerging DET markets. Due to its salient features of distributed ledger, consensus mechanisms, cryptography, and smart contracts, blockchain technology is being used to provide decentralised trust, immutability, security and privacy, and transparency in DET system. However, integrating blockchain in DET systems is facing technical, administrative, standardisation and economic barriers. Consequently, we seek to conduct a comprehensive market analysis to identify the specific challenges hindering the integration of blockchain in DET systems. Nonetheless, we noticed that there isn't any evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Therefore, in this work we first proposed a conceptual evaluation and review framework for conducting a systematic literature review on blockchain-based DET systems. Then, using the proposed framework, we reviewed the current studies on blockchain-based DET systems to the identify specific challenges hindering the adoption of blockchain and their proposed solutions. Our review found that, although there has been tremendous progress in addressing the technical barriers, the administrative, standardisation and economic barriers have grossly been under reviewed.

Automated summary

The increasing adoption of clean energy technologies has led to the evolution of traditional electricity markets into Distributed Energy Trading (DET) systems. Blockchain technology has the potential to provide decentralised trust, immutability, security, and transparency in DET systems. However, the integration of blockchain in DET systems faces technical, administrative, standardisation, and economic barriers, which need to be addressed.