SNIPPET – SECURE AND PRIVACY-FRIENDLY PEER-TO-PEER ELECTRICITY TRADING
Over the years the electricity market has significantly changed. Because of the growing share of for example solar and wind energy, our energy has been generated ever more locally. In today’s system, the energy which is not immediately used is sent to the grid. But couldn’t this be done more efficiently? The SNIPPET project investigates how energy can be exchanged between neighbours. It has several focal points. More flexible market mechanisms between users and data protection of their individual data are two of them.
In the past 20 years, the electricity market has been strongly debundled; local electricity markets, in which electricity can also be exchanged locally, will be the next step in this process. Exchanging electricity between neighbouring users could actually enable energy to be used more efficiently and less energy being lost in transportation on the grid.
However, our electricity grid isn’t currently ready to exchange energy between users. Geert Deconinck, professor at KU Leuven and connected to EnergyVille: “Our goal is, starting from a concept for a local electricity market, to come to a well-defined architecture which meets all market demands, and security- and privacy requirements. Thereby also taking into account (future) legal frameworks and the economic market logic.”
Taking all of this into account, SNIPPET looks into solutions for safer local electricity markets, in which households and SMEs can trade electricity, a users’ privacy is protected and the stability of the electricity grid guaranteed. “in the end, our solutions will be able to help end users to decide themselves how much electricity they want to trade, at what time and with whom”, continues Geert Deconinck.
The SNIPPET project was set up in a collaboration between the research groups COSIC (Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography), ELECTA (Electrical Energy & Computer Architectures) part of EnergyVille, CiTiP (Centre for IT and IP Law), IEEL (Institute for Environmental and Energy Law) of KU Leuven and SMIT (Studies in Media, Innovation and Technology) of VUB.
From a classic model…
… to peer-to-peer market mechanisms
