Blockchain Technology for Electric Utility Consumption

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SaskPower is the principal electric utility in Saskatchewan. The company has been recently active in theresearch and development of innovative software solutions to optimize the management and planning of publicpower systems including generation and transmission. In this regard, there are opportunities for improvementas well as identified difficulties in the power utilities market that could be addressed with the Blockchaintechnology. One of these opportunities is a unified way to get the dynamic rates for the bigger consumers withthe transparency of a trustable information of their meters along with the automated contracts (Smart BusinessRates). These rates correspond to the previous agreement with the client for the average monthly powerconsumption with a fixed rate (normally for industries), satisfying a set of constraints. Given the use ofdifferent systems and the change of rates for each client, a manual process is needed since there is a differentrule for each client. Constraints include the client agreement as well as the average of the last months and therules for extra fees and new rates. While this problem has been extensively studied in the literature, most of theworks use an approach that integrates the system and creates web views for the clients. This is not howeverpractical as there are issues regarding trustable data from meters to the client as well as different business rulesfor each client. We propose a solution based on smart technology. In order to address the challenges oftransparency and dynamic business rules inside of a system, we will adopt the use of Blockchain. Theinformation will be provided by smart meters that will send the updates directly to the Blockchain. With thesmart contract technology, we will be able to adjust the business rules according to each customer (includingdynamic changes of fees and contract execution). With a trustable data, we can in the system both theRegulator Body (from the government) and the financial institutions (to automate the bills payments and getnotifications regarding large incomes). This new approach will reduce time and resources, saves money toSaskPower and increase the client's satisfaction.