A Framework for Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Electric Vehicles Charging Station Sustainability Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations (CSs) are increasingly prevalent due to the growing adoption of renewable energy. Solar CSs’ main difficulties are energy efficiency, security, traceability, and sustainability. This article presents a novel blockchain-enabled EV charging framework that addresses these challenges using the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), the Metamask wallet, and smart contracts (SCs). This article introduces solarcoins, a digital currency for trading solar energy, which reduces human intervention while fostering trust, transparency, and privacy among EV users. The proposed solution ensures secure communication between CS operators and EV users, enhancing both security and traceability. The proposed solution ensures secure communication between CS operators and EV users, enhancing both security and traceability. To quantify the sustainability and efficiency of the proposed system, the framework performances are tested and evaluated by varying numbers and types (Read, Write, and Transfer) of transactions using Hyperledger caliper and Go Ethereum. The overhaul Performance metrics were measured under varied transaction rates and control parameters by varying the number of validator nodes (1 node to 5 nodes), such as transaction latency, throughput, resource utilization, and so on. The performance of three major functions—open, query, and transfer—was recorded and analyzed. The results show that the query transaction is faster than open and transfer and the latency increases linearly with increased transaction rate. At 1000 transaction per second, the open function has a latency of 260.22 s, whereas the query function has a latency of 104.12 s and the transfer function has a latency of 345.73 s. The average memory usage for 1node-clique is 1224.0 MB, while it is 76.8 MB for 5node-clique. Results reveal that with an increase in the number of cliques (Validator CSs), memory utilization decreased linearly. This happens because all framework transactions are distributed across each EV CS network. The SCs deployment and operational costs were measured. Complexity analysis reveals that functions, such as getStation, getUser, getStationState, etc., exhibit constant time complexity O(1), while the registerUser and addStation functions have linear space and time complexity O(n).