2022 IEEE 42nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW)
A Distributed Energy Trading Framework with
secure and effective Consensus Protocol
2022 IEEE 42nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW) | 978-1-6654-8879-2/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICDCSW56584.2022.00010
Jin Ye, Jiahua Liang
School of Computer and Electronic Information
Guangxi University
Nanning 530000, China
yejin@gxu.edu.cn, 2013391034@st.gxu.edu.cn
Abstract—With the rapid increase of DER(distributed energy
resources), it has become a global trend to establish a distributed
energy trading markets to coordinate these DERs. However,
the construction of distributed energy trading market faces
various challenges, in which trusted transaction among market
participants is crisis. Since the existing solutions need numerical
calculation and communication resource that lead to large delay,
this paper proposes a distributed energy trading framework
with secure and effective consensus protocol. Different from the
traditional PBFT(Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) that is
the notable debasement on interaction flow between processes, a
threshold signature mechanism is introduced and the consensus
process of trading is reconstructed. Theoretical analysis shows
that the communication complexity of the proposed framework is
optimized from O(n2 ) to O(n), and the computation complexity
of the participants is also reduced from O(n) to O(1). Our
simulation results also show that the task delay of our consensus
protocol begins to be lower than PBFT when the number of
participants exceeds a certain threshold. In particular, the trusted
transaction delay using our consensus protocol is reduced by
12.14% when the number of participants increases to 100.
Index Terms—distributed energy trading, blockchain, consen-
sus protocol, threshold signature
I. I NTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of power system, more and
more distributed energy resources(DERs) are connected to
the grid. DERs are most likely to cause fluctuations in grid
operation due to unstable output power of solar photovoltaic
arrays and wind turbines. Therefore, coordinating DERs to
build microgrids is an important solution to these problem.
Since the microgrid enables energy P2P(peer-to-peer) transfer
among entities, it can operate independently that increasing its
flexiblity and scalability [1].
In order to improve the utilization rate of energy in micro-
grid, a common approach is to establish distributed energy
trading market which allows participants in the market to
negotiate with each other to determine price of energy for
trading. Actually, distributed energy trading market has been
piloted around the world. For example, in USA, TeMix [2] is
a transactive energy platform, providing energy trading and
distributed management services; in Germany, Peer Energy
Cloud [3] is a commercial cloud for a virtual market enabling
local energy trading; in UK, Piclo [4] is an independent trading
market in which renewables, batteries and electric vehicles
2332-5666/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICDCSW56584.2022.00010
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Xiaohuan Li, Qian Chen
School of Information and Communication
Guilin University of Electronic Technology
Guilin 541000, China
lxhguet@guet.edu.cn, chenqian@mails.guet.edu.cn
can trade with each other. However, distributed energy trading
market has not been popularized on a large scale. There are
many challenges on the transaction in which biggest barrier is
trust crisis [5] among participants in the market and makes it
difficult for trading center to ensure fairness and transparency
of transaction.
Blockchain is essentially a distributed, chain-structured
database with shared ledgers [6]. There is not doubt that
blockchain is a state-of-the-art powerful technic to address
above problems in energy transaction due to its decentralized,
tamper-proof and traceable characteristics. In [7], blockchain
is applied to solve the single point of failure of P2P energy
trading market and ensures the safe operation of bidirectional
auction with trusted transaction at the same time. In [8], a two-
layer distributed P2P energy transaction platform is designed.
The market layer is responsible for the settlement of auction
pool. Furthermore, blockchain layer provides secure and reli-
able transaction for platform by implicating smart contracs. In
[9], a hierarchical bidding and transaction structure based on
blockchain was proposed, which is implicated by Hyperledger
Fabric to achieve safe transaction and inalterable ledgers.
As a self-organizing decentralized network, the consensus
protocol embedded in blockchain is an significant mechanism
to coordinate all network nodes without centralized man-
agement and third party supervision. However, few studies
noticed that consensus protocol will give rise to high deley
in settlement of energy transaction. It usually take less than
five minutes to settle energy transaction [10] but the existing
consensus protocols generally has the problem of low effi-
ciency, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements in
large-scale distributed energy trading scenarios. At present,
consensus protocols for energy trading can be categoried into
two classes: consensus with mining and consensus without
mining.
For the consensus with mining, network nodes packag-
ing the transactions information into blocks according to a
certain rule, which is called mining. Meanwhile, the nodes
conducting mining are called miners. Consensus with mining
often requires miners to consume amounts of computing
resources(including electricity) to contend transaction settle-
ment. In [11], a P2P trading platform of producers and
consumers is constructed based on PoW(Proof of Work)
1
 TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT CONSENSUS MECHANISMS
Consensus Mining Latency Computation burden
PoW yes very high very high
PoS yes high very high
PBFT no high high
Raft no low low
consensus. In addition, the rules for producers and consumers
to participate in market transactions are defined through smart
contracts which realize complete energy trading process in-
cluding transaction publishing, bidding matching and account-
ing. In [12], an optimized PoS(Proof of Stake) consensus
protocol is introduced to solve high mining expenses and
large energy consumption of PoW in decentralized P2P energy
trading market. Compared with PoW, PoS has less computing
resources requirement. However, it is still a non-neglectful
waste. Furthermore, miners with higher stake are more likely
to obtain accounting rights result in miners with lower stake
are less willing to participate in mining, which forms the
Matthew Effect [13]. PoCS, a PoS-like consensus protocol
based on credit proof is proposed in [14]. By introducing a
credit mechanism, the node with higher credit value has a
greater probability of obtaining accounting right, so as to en-
courage nodes to participate in market transactions. Whereas,
it doesn’t solve Matthew Effect problem of PoS.
For the consensus without mining, it achieve consensus
among network nodes through communication instead of con-
suming meaningless computing resources. In [15], a consen-
sus mechanism based on PBFT is proposed. The consensus
process of multi-energy subjects is designed to achieve high
robustness of consensus by dividing multiple energy regulatory
subjects, and effectively prevent the evil behavior of multi-
energy subjects. PBFT requires a large amount of broadcasting
and verification in the consensus process, resulting in high
communication and computing resource costs and high delay
in reaching consensus. In [16], the PBFT-like method is
adopted to design a hierarchical energy trading framework.
Meanwhile, the and the mutual verification of committee nodes
enables byzantine fault nodes are detected and removed from
the market. The consensus process of this paper requires a
huge amount of communication due to several iterations. In
[17], comparing with the existing consensus protocols used
for energy transaction, Raft is excellent in terms of delay and
throughput. However it does not tolerate byzantine fault and
is only suitable for strictly trusted distributed networks, not
for real energy trading markets.
It can be seen in TABLE I that the current consensus
protocols with mining generally consume a lot of computing
resource and have very high delay, which is difficult to meet
the performance requirements of fast settlement in energy
trading market. The consensus without mining can be further
classified into tolerable and intolerable for byzantine fault.
The classic example of byzantine fault tolerance is PBFT,
which does not require mining but still has high latency and
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Byzantine fault tolerance Paper
50% [10]
50% [11], [12]
33.33% [13], [14]
nonsupport [15]
computational complexity. The typical example of intolerant
byzantine fault is Raft, which has very low latency and low
computational complexity, but it is difficult to be applied to
real energy transactions due to intolerant byzantine fault, so
that it is rarely mentioned in current researches.
In this paper, a distributed energy trading framework is
proposed and an efficient and secure consensus protocol is
designed to prevent dishonest participants act evil. Compared
with existing studies, the framework proposed in this paper
significantly reduces communication complexity and compu-
tation complexity which is deployed in real distributed energy
transaction scenarios easier.
II. P ROPOSED DISTRIBUTED ENERGY TRADING
FRAMEWORK
In order to address the problems of trust crisis and low
efficiency in distributed energy trading, in this paper we
propose a distributed energy trading framework with efficient
and secure consensus protocol. The framework is based on
blockchain which can guarantee the robustness of trading
system. Meanwhile, a consensus protocol for energy trading
is designed, which not only brings secure to energy trading,
but also has higher efficiency compared with the traditional
method such as PBFT, PoW, PoS, etc. The price scheme was
introduced to protect fairness for all market participants.
A. Distributed energy trading market
The distributed energy trading market framework is shown
as Fig. 1(A). The market participants are composed of commit-
tee members and communities. The committee contains one
leader and several candidates. Candidates are elected by com-
munities and leader is elected by candidates. For simplicity,
this paper will not discuss election rules for candidates and
leader.
All the communities interact with leader to implement
consensus protocol, transmit supply/demand messages and
agree on market clearing price during trading cycles. After all
the market participants have reached a consensus, distributed
system operator(DSO) conducts energy transmission and trans-
action settlement according to consensus results.
The blockchain will stores the necessary transaction infor-
mation such as consensus results, energy transmission results
and transaction settlement results. Because of the advantages
of immutable and traceable blockchain, it is easier for system
maintainers to trace the party responsible for the transaction
failure.
 Fig. 1. Distributed energy trading framework.
B. Consensus protocol
In distributed energy trading market, each participant holds
a private key share and a public key for signing and verifying
market clearing price generated in the consensus process. The
proposed consensus protocol includes 6 stage, as Fig.1(A)
illustrates.
• Demand: All the communities send their supply/demand
requests < pi > to leader.
• Broadcast: Leader collect all the supply/demand mes-
sages < pi > for determining the market clearing price
in this trading cycle. The market clearing price < λ >
will be produced by price scheme. And then leader should
broadcast < λ¿ to all communities.
• Sign: All the communities receive < λ > and then sign
for it by their private keys. Then communities send their
signature < λisig > to the leader.
• Verify: Leader receives enough signatures < λisig > to
aggregate them into a single signature < λsig >, and then
broadcasts < λisig > to all communities for verifying.
• Confirm: Communities generate their acknowledge char-
acter < ACK i > by verifying < λisig > in big public
key. Then transmiting their < ACK i > to leader.
• End: Leader receives enough < ACK i >, cerates
consensus ending signal < EN D, λsig >, and broadcasts
< EN D, λsig > to all communities. Every community
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once receive < EN D, λsig >, which proof all partici-
pants agree to trading by market clearing price < λsig >.
Communities can save the consensus results in their local
storage.
Algorithm 1 and Algorithm 2 define the actions of leader
and communities in the consensus process respectively.
C. Threshold signature
Each community has its own one public key and one private
key share. The community i signing for market clearing price
through its private key share is as follows:
λisig = signi (λ, sharei ) (1)
Where sharei denotes the share of private key held by
community i.
For a signature collection {λisig }i∈I and threshold k, when
|i| = k, the signatures is aggregated into a single signature by
method combine(), as follow:
 
λsig = aggregate λ, {λisig }i∈I (2)
Where I denotes communities set.
All the communities can verify λsig with public key, as
follow:
result = (λ, λsig , P U BKEY ) (3)
Fig. 1(B) illustrates the process of threshold signature.
 Algorithm 1: Proposed consensus protocol for leader Algorithm 2: Proposed consensus protocol for com-
1 Initialization. stage, Pt , Dt ; munity i
2 while stage = End do 1 Initialization. stage, pi ;
3 while stage == DEM AN D do 2 while stage = EN D do
4 if receive M number of < pi > then 3 while stage == DEM AN D do
5 update Pt and Dt with pi per equation (5 - 4 send < pi > to leader
6); stage ← BROADCAST
6 stage ← BROADCAST ; 5 end
7 end 6 while stage == BROADCAST do
8 end 7 receive λ from leader;
9 while stage == BROADCAST do 8 stage ← Sign;
10 calculate λ based equation (7-11); 9 end
11 broadcast < λ > toallcommunities; 10 while stage == SIGN do
12 stage ← SIGN ; 11 generate signature λisig by sharei and λ based
13 end equation (1);
14 while stage == SIGN do 12 send < λisig > to leader;
15 receive λisig from Mi ; 13 stage ← V ERIF Y ;
16 Sλ ← Sλ ∪ {λisig }; 14 end
17 if receive M number of < λisig > then 15 while stage == V ERIF Y do
18 generate λsig by aggregating Sλ based 16 receive λsig from leader;
equation (2); 17 stage ← CON F IRM
19 stage ← V ERIF Y ; 18 end
20 end 19 while stage == CON F IRM do
21 end 20 generate result by verifying λsig with
22 while stage == V ERIF Y do P U BKEY based equation (3);
23 broadcast < λsig > to all communities; 21 if result == SU CCESS then
24 stage ← CON F IRM 22 send ACK i to leader;
25 end 23 stage ← EN D;
26 while stage == CON F IRM do 24 else
27 if receive M number of ACK i then 25 stage ← DEM AN D;
28 generate EN D; 26 end
29 broadcast < EN D, λsig > to all 27 end
communities ; 28 while stage == END do
30 stage ← EN D; 29 receive EN D, λsig from leader;
31 end 30 save λsig in local ledger;
32 end 31 return
33 end 32 end
33 end

D. Pricing Scheme
At time t, the supply and demand ratio t of microgrid show
Suppose there are N communities in microgrid. At time t, as follow:
nb communities plan to buy energy and ns communities plant Pt
t = (7)
to sell energy. Then nb and ns are constrained as follow: Dt
nb + ns = N (4) The energy price should be inversely proportional to the
ratio of supply and demand t .
And the whole energy demand Dt in the microgrid sum as b
follow: St = (8)
γt +1
 
Dt = dt1 + dt2 + . . . + dtnb , t ∈ [t1 , t2 , . . . , tn ] (5) Suppose that S (0) denotes the energy price that community
sell energy to grid, and B (0) denotes the energy price that
The whole energy supply Pt in the microgrid sum as follow: community buy energy from grid. At time t, the selling price
  at n + 1 iterations is donated as S t (n + 1) and updated by
Pt = pt1 + pt2 + . . . + dtns , t ∈ [t1 , t2 , . . . , tn ] (6)
follow:
Where dti denotes energy demand of community i at time B t (n)
S t (n + 1) = B t (n)−S t (n) (9)
t, and pt denotes energy supply of community i at time t. S t (n) t + 1

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 TABLE II
C OMMUNICATION COMPLEXITY OF PBFT AND PROPOSED CONSENSUS

Stage Request Pre-prepare Prepare Commit Reply Ttrans (N )

PBFT
Number of communication 1 n n2 n2 n O(n2 )
Stage Broadcast Sign Verify Confirm End Ttrans (N )
Proposed consensus
Number of communication n n n n n O(n)

TABLE III
V ERIFICATION COMPLEXITY OF PBFT AND PROPOSED CONSENSUS

Consensus Number of communities in microgrid Number of verification Tvalid (N )

PBFT n n O(n)
Proposed consensus n 1 O(1)

The buying price at n + 1 iterations donates B t (n + 1), As a traditional consensus protocol, PBFT has been widely
it is updated by follow: used in consortium blockchain, such as Hyperledger Fabric
  and Tendermint. TABLE II illustrates the communication com-
Dt B t (n) = P t S t (n + 1) + Dt − P t B t (n) (10) plexity comparison between PBFT and proposed consensus
  protocol. We can conclude that the communication complexity
B t (n + 1) = S t (n + 1) t + B t (n) 1 − t (11)
of PBFT is O(n2 ), and proposed consensus protocol is O(n).
The iterations will stop when S t (n) = B t (n). So that the It is a great improvement that the communication complexity
market clearing price λ = S t (n) = B (n). of proposed consensus protocol is one order of magnitude
lower than that of PBFT. Fig 2 shows the number of com-
III. E VALUATION munication comparison between two protocols.
This paper focus on the efficiency of consensus protocols.
The measurement of efficiency mainly depends on the com- B. Computation Complexity
munication complexity and message verification complexity of For computation complexity, it is defined as follows:
consensus protocol. 
Tverif y (N ) = Ti (N ) (13)
A. Communication Complexity
i∈I
For communication complexity, it is defined as follows:
 Where I denotes the number of computation.
Ttrans (N ) = Ti (N ) (12) PBFT transmits messages encrypted by asymmetric en-
i∈K cryption, which means that communities have to verify the
messages it receives to ensure that everyone agrees. On the
contrary, proposed consensus encrypts messages by threshold
signature. Leader will combine all the messages signed by
every communities into one single signature, and this signature
could be verified by every communities.

Fig. 2. Number of communication comparison.

Where K denotes the stages of consensus process. N de-

notes the size of problems. The communication complexity
Fig. 3. Number of computation comparison.
of consensus stage Ti (N ) is determined by the number of
communication between each community in the stage.

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 As TABLE III shows. Suppose that there are n communities
in the microgrid. As mentioned above, the PBFT will cost
O(n) computation complexity, but proposed consensus will just
cost O(1) computation to verify. Fig 3 shows the number of
computation comparison between two protocols.
C. Task Latency
In order to compare the task delay of PBFT and proposed
consensus protocol, this paper implemented the two protocols
respectively by using GO language, and simulated multiple
market participants in laboratory computer(CPU: 2.7 GHz
dual-core Intel Core i5, memory: 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3,
operating system: macOS version 11.6.4) for simulation test.
The experimental results are shown in Fig 4.
Fig. 4. Task latency comparison.
The experimental results show that when the number of
participants is more than 60, the delay of proposed consensus
protocol is lower than PBFT. When the number of participants
is 100, the delay of proposed consensus protocol is reduced
by 12.14% compared with PBFT.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In general, this paper proposes a distributed electricity trad-
ing market framework based on blockchain, which integrates
secure and efficient consensus protocol and price mechanism
to ensure the fairness of market transactions. Through the
theoretical analysis of the communication complexity and
computation complexity of consensus protocol, the results
show that the proposed framework has a significant improve-
ment on efficiency of consensus protocol. Especially when the
number of participants grows rapidly, our framework has more
significant advantages on task latency.
The framework proposed in this paper is a consensus
scenario for energy trading among market participants, and
is also suitable for other tasks. Therefore, the method has
important reference value for the safe and efficient application
of distributed energy system.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grants, China (61762030),
and in part by the Guangxi Natural Science Foundation
under Grants, China(2019GXNSFFA245007), Key Research
and Development Program of Guangxi(2021AB06002), Open
Foundation of Innovation Center for Hebei Intelligent Grid
Distribution Technology.
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