Current trends of decarbonization and decentralization of the energy sector drive a shift towards implementation of distributed renewable energy sources. This expansion causes challenges for energy systems, mostly due to limited flexibility in production and supply of energy coming from small-scale renewables. One of the ways to overcome these challenges is digitization which is said to support integration of these production units into efficient systems.
At the same time blockchain is getting a lot of attention in the energy sector. It is associated with high potential to foster the aforementioned digitization by being introduced in several applications. Throughout many of them, the most popular one is operating trading platforms for peer-to-peer electricity systems.
The aim of this report is to investigate if blockchain characteristics are able to fulfill needs faced by peer-to-peer electricity trading systems. The main focus here lays in two aspects: environmental by examining if technology can lead to reduction of fossil fuel consumption and thus carbon footprint; and economic by checking if it can be operated with low costs for end-users of these trading systems.