Blockchain-based Energy Transaction Model for
Electric Vehicles in V2G Network
Md. Mainul Islam Md. Shahjalal
Department of Electronics Department of Electronics
Engineering Engineering
Kookmin University Kookmin University
Seoul, South Korea Seoul, South Korea
mainul.islam@ieee.org mdshahjalal26@ieee.org
Abstract—Electric vehicles (EVs) have been gaining remark-
able popularity throughout the world over the past few decades
as they produce lower emissions by the efficient utilization of
renewable energy and pollute less than conventional vehicles.
They have emerged as a promising solution of climate change
and energy crisis issues. It is an urgent need to develop a secure
and reliable energy transaction model for electric vehicles in
vehicle-to-grid (V2G) network. In order to solve the problem
of energy shortage during peak hours and keep the balance of
electricity supply, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based
energy transaction model for EVs in V2G network, which enables
peer-to-peer energy transactions between EVs and power grid
without need of trusted third party.
Index Terms—Electric vehicles, blockchain, energy transaction.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The technological advancements of electric vehicles (EVs)
and the rapid growth of smart grid lead to the advent of
vehicle-to-grid (V2G). V2G refers to a technology that enables
unused electrical energy to be pushed back from electric
vehicles to power grid as well as has the bidirectional en-
ergy flowing capability. It is also regarded as vehicle-grid
integration (VGI) [1], [2], which assists power grid in energy
management during peak hours and also at the time of un-
availability of renewable energy resources, e.g., at night when
solar panels cannot generate electricity by the sunlight [2].
In this case, the idle EVs can deliver their unused electrical
energy stored in their batteries to power grid for money;
thus, create an opportunity of electricity trading in vehicular
networks. Moreover, a massive deployment of V2G technology
could reduce the necessity to establish additional power plants;
hence, reduce the cost of electricity generation.
EVs can provide both regulation services (down and up)
[3]–[5] by charging the battery from the grid and discharging
the battery to the grid, respectively. The employment of EVs
means going one step ahead to reduce the carbonization
of environment. Designing an energy transaction model in
a dynamic platform is a challenging task, where energy
consumers (while charging) or prosumers (while dicharging)
are not stable in location. Blockchain, a distributed ledger
technology, can provide peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions among
the energy consumers and prosumers as well as record the
978-1-7281-4985-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
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Moh. Khalid Hasan Yeong Min Jang
Department of Electronics Department of Electronics
Engineering Engineering
Kookmin University Kookmin University
Seoul, South Korea Seoul, South Korea
khalidrahman@ieee.org yjang@kookmin.ac.kr
transaction data in a decentralized manner in the network with
high security. The blocks are connected with each other by
some cryptographic hashes and every block contains a hash
value that is the hash of the hash value of its previous block.
In [6], the authors proposed blockchain-based secure energy
trading in software defined networking (SDN)-enabled V2G
network. Liu et al. [7] proposed a blockchain-based power
trading mechanism for EVs in V2G network. A consor-
tium blockchain based energy trading model with privacy-
preserving was proposed in [8]. Blockchain-based P2P energy
transaction model was introduced in [9] to provide solutions
for energy Internet. Blockchain-enabled power transaction
model based on multi-agent coalition was proposed in [10].
We focus on blockchain-based energy transaction for EVs in
V2G networks.
II. P ROPOSED M ODEL
In this section, a blockchain-based energy transaction model
for EVs is proposed as shown in Fig. 1. Energy companies
install a number of charging stations at different points. The
charging stations also have the discharging equipments. Every
EV has some energy coins that are the assets to buy energy
from energy prosumers on demand. The energy coins can be
bought with money from energy companies or prosumers. In
running condition, an EV can also buy energy coins from
other neighboring consumers in the same vehicular network.
In order to cope with the energy shortage during peak hours,
EVs in this model are provided with charging and discharging
facilities. They can deliver their unused energy stored in their
batteries to the grid by discharging the batteries. For their
contribution in energy management in energy crisis moments,
they are rewarded with some energy coins depending on the
amount of energy they deliver to the gird. Since most of the
EVs remain idle at night, they can discharge their battery for
getting rewards from the grid in the form of energy coins.
However, they need to charge their batteries again in the next
morning. In this regard, grid will sell energy at a lower price to
the EVs according to their contribution in energy management
by self discharging. This can be considered as a bidirectional
energy trade-off between the EVs and the smart grid.
628 ICAIIC 2020
 Fig. 1. Blockchain-based energy transaction model for EVs.

Other facilities we propose that the EVs can be notified by
the control center via Internet about their remaining amount of
energy and the locations of nearby charging stations to charge
their batteries. During peak hours, the control center will also
offer them for discharging their unused energy if possible to
get rewards. To monitor the energy usage and the remaining
amount of energy of the EVs, every EV has one smart meter
installed in it. The smart meter sends the energy data of this
EV to the control center in every hour so that the control center
can estimate the hourly demand of energy.
The main feature of our proposed model is blockchain-based
energy transaction. With the help of blockchain technology, an
EV can trade energy with smart grid without the need of any
truested thrid party. No bank is required for payment as the
energy is sold for energy coins. The transaction data is stored
in some cryptographic blocks that are connected with each
other by cryptographic hashes to enhance the security. The
data are stored in a decentralized manner so that anyone in
the network can view the transaction histories at any time. The
same copy of transaction histories is shared among the EVs
in the V2G network. It is difficult to break the security of this
blockchain network because every block contains a hash value
that is the hash of the hash value of its previous block. Once
the transaction data are stored in the blockchain, they can never
be modified. If any mismatch occurs between two consecutive
blocks, the whole blocks will not match with each other and
the network can easily identify it. Furthermore, hacking any
single block will not be enough to hack the network. For
hacking the network, someone has to hack at least 51% blocks
in the blockchain.

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Fig. 2. Energy transaction data in blockchain network.
Fig. 2 illustrates the stored transaction data in the blockchain
network. Each block contains a hash value, a timestamp,
and a list of transactions. In Block 0, Transaction 1 and
Transaction 2 indicate that the vehicles EV1 and EV2 are
charging their batteries from the grid paying energy coins at a
rate of 1 coin/kWh. In Block 1, EV3 is charging its battery but
EV4 is discharging. In the case of discharging, grid provides
some rewards to EV4 at a rate of 0.1 coin/kWh. Rewarding
EV is valid only at the time of peak hours, when the grid
goes through energy crisis condition. This is because if the
rewards are provided for 24 hours, some vehicles may take
this advantage unethically, hampering their battery lifetimes.
Moreover, the grid does not require additional energy from
EVs all the time in a day except peak hours. The peak hours
or rewarding times are notified to all the EVs registered in the
V2G network from the control center.
III. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed a blockchain-based energy
trading model for EVs in V2G network. P2P energy trans-
actions between charging stations and EVs without need of
any trusted third party are enabled by means of blockchain
technology. The transaction data are stored in the blockchain
network in a distributed manner. Smart monitoring of the
energy usage and the remaining amount of energy of EVs
is enabled by installing smart meters into EVs and connecting
the EVs to the smart grid via Internet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Sci-
ence and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technol-
ogy Research Center) support program (IITP-2018-0-01396)
supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information communi-
cations Technology Promotion).
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