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CHAPTER 12

Distributed Autonomous Energy

Organizations: Next-Generation

Blockchain Applications for

Energy Infrastructure

Michael Mylrea
Cyber Security & Energy Technology, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, United States

12.1 INTRODUCTION TO DISTRIBUTED AUTONOMOUS
ENERGY ORGANIZATIONS

Advances in blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to spur dis-
ruptive innovation, automating exchanges in value in new ways that are
reducing the need for third-party trust mechanisms. These advances could
help pave the way to a more distributed and agile energy grid that ties in a
larger percentage of renewable energy resources and enables peer-to-peer
and energy transactions. While grid modernization has helped spur a more
distributed and flexible smart grid, it has also created new challenges, such as
increasing the number of intermediaries involved in exchanging energy.
Grid modernization has also increased the cyber-attack surface through
the increased use of smart energy devices that network, digitize, automate,
and increasingly converge energy supplies in the cyber-physical energy sup-
ply chain. Blockchain or distributed ledger technology shows potential in
identifying and monitoring these complex Energy Internet of Things (EIoT)
environments, characterized by an increasing number of critical cyber assets
and data being exchanged in a complex energy value chain. Blockchain
technology shows potential in overcoming some of these challenges needed
to give impetus to more DAEOs.

12.1.1 DAEO Enablers: AI and Blockchain
Blockchain helps provide the technical requirements needed to disrupt the
current energy paradigm, where centralized generation is often distributed

Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc.
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