Smart power

Energy consumption

Quantum mechanics

Control (management)

Thermal comfort

Engineering

Statistics

Solidity

Peak demand

Computer security

Energy (signal processing)

Telecommunications

Power (physics)

Blockchain

Computer science

Occupancy

Home automation

Energy management

Zero-energy building

Thermodynamics

Physics

Mathematics

Automotive engineering

Artificial intelligence

Building automation

Architectural engineering

Programming language

Load shifting

Electricity

Building management system

Electrical engineering

Sustainable Cities and Society

Smart homes, connected through a network, can optimize the energy consumption and general load shape of their area. In this work, a blockchain-based smart solution is presented for demand-side management of residential buildings in a neighborhood to improve Peaks to Average Ratios (PAR) of power load, reduce energy consumption, and increase the thermal comfort of occupants by modeling heating, illumination, and appliance systems. For real-time power and temperature monitoring of the neighborhood, a transient numerical physical model has been developed. The simulator has been validated with data measured from a building in Northern Italy. Then, a neighborhood with 2,000 households has been modeled for different occupancy patterns, initial values, and boundary conditions. Two different control scenarios, namely basic and smart, have been considered. In the basic scenario, everything is managed by occupants except the boiler, which is controlled by the indoor temperature of the home. Instead, in the smart scenario, a blockchain-based network has been introduced for buildings to exchange a parameter called the Probability of the Next Hour (PNH). Ethereum Solidity has been deployed for smart contract development in the blockchain. The results show that using blockchain-connected smart controllers aimed at demand-side management can improve PAR, comfort level, and energy efficiency of buildings, which can bring about CO2 reduction on an urban and even global scale.

Blockchain-based solution for energy demand-side management of residential buildings