NOVA-Charge – A Novel and Secure Approach for Effective Electric Vehicle Charging using Blockchain

Electric Vehicles are attaining greater popularity in the recent times due to its potential for reducing carbon emissions. However, lack of sufficient public charging stations is found to be major hindrance to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Though several shared charging models are in place, ascertaining the trustworthiness of the participating entities continues to be a challenging problem. This paper proposes a novel approach called NOVA-Charge that exploits the potential of blockchain technology to facilitate trusted and secure charging of electric vehicles. The approach involves deployment of decentralized blockchain network for enabling transparency and trust. The transactions of shared charging are maintained on blockchain and smart contracts are developed for authorization and pricing. The credibility of the participating entities is evaluated and appropriate incentive mechanisms are employed for ensuring best charging experience. The system model is implemented using Ganache and the results reveal that NOVA-Charge provides better throughput and efficiency when compared to the state of the art approach. Thus, the proposed model can be deployed for facilitating efficient, secure and trusted environment for shared electric vehicle charging in real time scenario.