Towards a Distributed Autonomous Organisation for Financing, Governing and Disbursing Revenues of a Battery Energy Storage System

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for a blockchain-based decentralised autonomous organisation that mediates the financing, governance, and revenue dispersal for a battery energy storage system fully controlled by remote token holders. In the proposed framework, the participants can buy a fractional share of an energy storage asset, embodied as a blockchain token, with corresponding rights and privileges enforced by smart contracts. The token holders continually vote to govern the battery’s operation (charge/float/discharge); these votes are autonomously aggregated by the smart contract, which is also empowered to directly dispatch the battery’s mode of operation by issuing physical control signals. Furthermore, the smart contract itself maintains a financial payment channel with the electricity market, transacting stable coins back and forth as it buys and sells energy from the spot market, per the token holders’ consensus wishes. This paper presents a case study simulation of this radical conception of asset ownership and control, whereby token holders vote based on the real-time price of electricity, their particular electricity price forecast, and the current state of charge of the battery.