A Relational Network Framework for Interoperability in Distributed Energy Trading

Blockchain-based approaches are increasingly being used to provide distributed trust and security in Distributed Energy Trading (DET). However, the state-of-the-art solutions lack scalability, privacy, interoperability, and often have large computational overheads hindering their mainstream adoption for sustainable development. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a multi-relationship network framework (RNF) that uses hypergraphs to organise participants in energy trading networks based on high-order relationships (rather than pairwise) for flexibility, interoperability, data privacy, and reduced resource consumption. Results indicate that the proposed framework outperforms the baseline in terms of: enabling value transfer across multiple blockchain-based DET systems; reducing computational costs and achieving energy efficiency for sustainable development.