A Unified Testing Platform to mature Blockchain applications for Grid Emulation environments

Blockchain technology is a relatively novel technology that can be used to develop more decentralized, autonomous and tamper-evident solutions. A feature that can aid Transactive Energy Systems to reach their goals by enabling individual actors to communicate and reach consensus with other participants in a decentralized fashion. However, technical barriers to evaluate and adopt this type of technology within the electrical domain still exist. To facilitate this task, Blockchain for Optimized Security and Energy Management (BLOSEM) Unified Testing Platform (UTP), a DOE-sponsored, multi-lab effort intends to accelerate the development of solutions by offering a common set of reusable services that can be used to interconnect existent grid tools with blockchain services. The UTP is intended to serve as a development platform that can provide application engineers with the technical means to evaluate potential blockchain solutions, by enabling them to concentrate on the actual application functionality while at the same time abstracting the connectivity and performance measurement tasks. The versatility of UTP is further demonstrated by integrating two use cases to validate the feasibility of implementing these applications as blockchain-based solutions while also demonstrating the UTP features.