A Decentralized Framework to Gather and Certify Green Energy Data in Demand Response Programs

The increasing adoption of renewable energy sources introduces significant variability in power generation, requiring effective strategies to ensure maintain grid stability. Incentive-based demand response programs provide a practical solution for balancing supply and demand, however disputes may arise over energy data integrity. The existing solutions frequently rely on centralized authorities, exposing a single point of failure, or high costs and privacy limitation of recording granular data on-chain. To address this challenge, we propose a decentralized framework that separates cloud storage from integrity certification. This system employs a community aggregator to collect high-frequency energy measurements, store the raw data in the cloud, while anchors unique cryptographic hashes for batch of raw data to a public blockchain. This process creates an auditable and tamper-evident record of data. By recording only hashes on chain, our approach achieves privacy and scalability. Evaluation using a real-world Australian dataset confirms that the system enables transparent dispute resolution, with blockchain transaction costs consistently representing less than 0.10% of the total incentives awarded to participants.