# Can Blockchain Strengthen the Energy Internet?
## 1 Introduction
However, as a consequence of delegation of authority among stakeholders and alleviating the contribution of the intermediary, trust establishment would become a key consideration regarding EI grids. Additionally, the cyber-physical system created by the increasing number of stakeholders connecting to the grid through the diverse applications of EI would result in innumerable access points and large data sets, which would elevate its vulnerability towards malicious attacks. Performing grid operations with a large number of heterogeneous access points will be challenging. This would require secure and reliable communication channels for control implementation using the aggregated data, which requires prevention from information leakage [4]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Conventional Smart Grids** & **EI Grids/Smart Grid 2.0** \\ \hline Centralized power distribution & Decentralized power distribution \\ \hline Integration of limited energy resources (i.e., conventional generation and a few Renewable Energy Sources (RES)) & Integration of heterogeneous DER including RES, EVs and ESS \\ ine Utility-centric operations where utility governs the ownership of the grid Distribution System Operator (DSO) & Consumer-centric operations with equal level playing field for all participating stakeholders \\ ine Energy traded and information exchanged between the DSO and the customers & Energy traded and real-time information shared in a peer-to-peer manner \\ \hline Closed proprietary and non-inter-operable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the disruptive technology enabler & Open and inter-operable technologies based on IP is the disruptive technology enabler \\ \hline Impedes autonomous grid operation & Integrates AI and ML technologies to enable autonomous grid operations \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Comparison of smart grids and EI grids [6,8,9]. EI will be enabled through blockchain, which is a Distribute Ledger Technology (DLT) with inherent features including immutability, transparency, distributed verification/storage and decentralized authority over a peer-to-peer network [10]. Security features and privacy-preserving techniques incorporated with blockchains offer solutions to mitigate cyber-physical attacks and privacy violations within the operations of the EI grid. Smart contracts enable autonomous operations of the EI grid with the execution of programmed scripts upon the fulfilment of the defined prerequisites [11]. Some processes could be automated through the utilization of smart contracts implemented upon blockchain platforms. These include billing for the energy consumption, invocation and revocation of certificates to authorize heterogeneous DER integration, authorizing payments upon energy trading, dynamic price signalling and monitoring IoT devices to identify node tampering [12, 13, 14]. Realization of EI is also envisaged to be facilitated through the developments of beyond 5G and 6G communication networks through inherent features. These include DLT/blockchain, ultra-massive machine-type communication, extremely low-power communication, extremely reliable low-latency communication, AI and ML, big data management and distributed processing through edge intelligence [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. Even though blockchain is expected to become a key enabler of EI, the integration of blockchain platforms with EI has not been investigated to a considerable extent [4, 8, 21]. This offers research directives in abundance and to address the identified research gap, this paper presents six key directions of blockchain utilization in EI grid realization. These are (1) energy sustainability through heterogeneity; (2) improved trust, security and privacy; (3) ultimate grid reliability and stability; (4) decentralized scalability; (5) advanced big data management; and (6) grid intelligence.