A privacy-preserving trading strategy for blockchain-based P2P electricity transactions

With the rising demand for energy in distribution networks and the growing development of communication technology, peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading realized by blockchain technology not only promotes the participation of distributed generation resources in the energy supply but also enhances the fairness of P2P electricity trading through the decentralized and transparent characteristics of the blockchain. However, owing to the openness and transparency of the on-chain data in the blockchain, the order information submitted by P2P market participants to the blockchain may encounter threats of information disclosure. To address this challenge, we have designed a novel three-layer architecture for P2P electricity trading, whose primary objective is to protect the private information submitted to the blockchain through a new privacy-preserving trading strategy. The proposed three-layer architecture is composed of a physical layer, information layer and market layer. An on-chain data protection method with homomorphic encryption and secure multi-party computing (SMPC) is used to sort and clear encrypted orders in the information layer, and the trading checking and safe settlement process of encrypted orders in continuous double auction (CDA) market are realized through grid security-constrained market mechanism in the market layer. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by case studies running on the IBM Hyperledger Fabric.