An Ethereum-based discrete event private blockchain platform for peer-to-peer trading in multi-community smart energy systems

• A private Ethereum-based discrete-event blockchain is developed for P2P energy trading. • Smart contracts using Solidity automate market matching, settlement, and tokenization. • Platform integrates ERC-20 token framework to support secure energy transactions. • Gas fee modeling and minimization are implemented for cost-efficient operations. • Validated on IEEE 14-Bus multi-community system with real dynamic market behavior. Due to the fast growth in renewable energy production, which enables households to sell excess power directly and better manage its intermittent nature, the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy market has become considerably more established, as it’s aligned with the decentralization and digitalization of power systems and local markets. It’s a system that lets energy consumers and producers trade energy directly with one another. Furthermore, the presence of blockchain technology increases these techno-economic advantages for energy systems, particularly when integrated with P2P energy trading. Consequently, a wide range of works have considered the integration of P2P and blockchain; however, few of them have investigated the full details of this system, including its performance, Transaction (TX) gas fee in a secure and private platform. Following this, the proposed work presents an Ethereum-based discrete event Private blockchain and its integration with P2P energy trading market in a Multi-Community Energy System (MCES). Considered on an IEEE 14-Bus MCES with 3 communities and 20 participating agents (11 consumers, 5 generators, and 4 not participating in the market), the platform uses Web3 and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for execution. Smart contracts, written in Solidity, handle tokenization by Ethereum Request for Comment 20 (ERC-20) standards and market matching/settlement discrete event processes. On the secure performance, the proposed platform is based on Keccak-256 for immutability, while TX gas fees are minimized. Results show synchronized peak demands up to 60 (MW), diurnal Renewable Energy Sources (RES) outputs peaking at 40 (MW), alongside the market prices, and agents’ revenues. Finally, the reliability of the platform is evaluated based on two main metrics of Transaction Success Rate (TSR) = 1 (100%) and Transaction Per Second (TPS) = 3.29, with a primary mode centered at 1.8–2.0 TPS, a secondary peak at 4.0–4.2 TPS.