Reliable Reputation Review and Secure Energy Transaction of Microgrid Community Based on Hybrid Blockchain

A growing number of prosumers have entered the local power market in response to an increase in the number of residential users who can afford to install distributed energy resources. The traditional microgrid trading platform has many problems, such as low transaction efficiency, the high cost of market maintenance, opaque transactions, and the difficulty of ensuring user privacy, which are not conducive to encouraging users to participate in local electricity trading. A blockchain-based mechanism of microgrid transactions can solve these problems, but the common single-blockchain framework cannot manage user identity. This study thus proposes a mechanism for secure microgrid transactions based on the hybrid blockchain. A hybrid framework consisting of private blockchain and consortium blockchain is first proposed to complete market transactions. The private blockchain stores the identifying information of users and a review of their transactions, while the consortium blockchain is responsible for storing transaction information. The block digest of the private blockchain is stored in the consortium blockchain to prevent information on the private blockchain from being tampered with by the central node. A reputation evaluation algorithm based on user behavior is then developed to evaluate user reputation, which affects the results of the access audit on the private blockchain. The higher a user’s reputation score is, the more benefits he/she can obtain in the transaction process. Finally, an identity-based proxy signcryption algorithm is proposed to help the intelligent management device with limited computing power obtain signcryption information in the transaction process to protect the transaction information. A system analysis showed that the secure transaction mechanism of the microgrid based on the hybrid blockchain boasts many security features, such as privacy, transparency, and imtamperability. The proposed reputation evaluation algorithm can objectively reflect all users’ behaviors through their reputation scores, and the identity-based proxy signcryption algorithm is practical.