This invention “BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY ENABLED SMART ELECTRICITY BILLING SYSTEM” is relates to blockchain-based Wattcoin payment system for secured
payment system for electricity billing prepayment system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Besides, the measurement of the electricity consumption still using the old metering method
in unit terms of Kilowatt Per-Hour (kW/h), which is based on the power consumption at a
certain amount of time. In order to enable the electricity sharing over the existing power grid
system, we need to change this type of measurement method into another form of asset that
can be transferred among its peers. This type of asset is absolutely referred to the digital
assets and moves over the peer-to-peer network. The process of transforming the electrical
power to the digital assets is called Tokenization. In this paper, the tokenized asset is called
Wattcoin. Our Wattcoin can be transferred or controlled by Wattcoin wallet, which is a
mobile application that can be installed by users on their smartphone. The Wattcoin usage
can be reduced in the electricity meter by having Exhaustion Function. Besides the reduction
of the Wattcoins, the Exhaustion Function also gives a real-time electricity usage reading of
personal or overall users. To enhance the overall performance of prepayment system and
avoid issues within the present prepayment system, including a single point of failure and
fake transaction data, the design of a network prepayment meter reading system, which is
fully based on blockchain technology. The proposed scheme utilizes the blockchain
technology to replace the centralised system with the peer-to-peer system. Furthermore, the
replacement of the prepaid card with the electronic wallet (i.e., the Wattcoins wallet) in order
to replace the usage of card which is not very cost effective and users can buy the resource
directly from the store. The blockchain technology itself is really an advanced technology,
often referred to as the new-era of intelligent technology. This is due to the fact that
blockchain technology combines many advanced technologies such as zero-knowledge proof,
consensus algorithm, and state transition system to achieve one of the most secured and
trusted platforms.
PRIOR ART STATEMENT
TW202008267A discloses an embodiment of the present invention are a bookkeeping
method and device, and an integrated transaction and finance system. The method comprises:
receiving a bookkeeping request transmitted by a transaction processing system, wherein the
request carries financial information of a transaction to be recorded; detecting, according to
the financial information, whether the transaction satisfies a set bookkeeping condition; and if
so, triggering a bookkeeping node in a bookkeeping system to record the transaction
according to the financial information, wherein the bookkeeping node is a node in a
blockchain.
US20170337534A1 discloses A virtualized blockchain forest includes a plurality of
individual blockchains. Each individual blockchain of the plurality includes a blockchain
height, a genesis block, and at least one additional block. The virtualized blockchain forest
further includes a plurality of participating processors that make up a consensus pool, and a
blockchain forest height having a time-sequenced start-to-finish length of blocks among the
collective plurality of individual blockchains. The virtualized blockchain forest is configured
to aggregate different ones of the plurality of individual blockchains, and is further
configured to terminate individual ones of plurality of individual blockchains.
WO2018113572A1 discloses an automatic payment system and an automatic payment
method realized based on block chain technology. The system is provided with a vehiclemounted terminal, a roadside unit, a background server, a block chain network and an
unattended device. In the method, a vehicle-mounted terminal interacts with a roadside unit
of an unattended device in advance, via a communication module, to send vehicle
information, a service request and payment account information; the roadside unit forwards
the information to a background server; the background server mounts the information or a
summary for calculating the information in a block chain network, and generates an
automatic identification code and returns same to the vehicle-mounted terminal through the
roadside unit; and when a vehicle enters an area near the unattended device, the unattended
device verifies the automatic identification code sent by the vehicle-mounted terminal and
provides a specified service when the verification is passed. Based on the present invention,
automatic provision of a specified service can be achieved and automatic payment can be
completed. The present invention is simple to operate and provides a good user experience.
US20170372278A1 discloses a payment system based on use of a blockchain-based
electronic currency substantiated by a reserve of assets, as well are methods for issuance and
circulation of the aforementioned electronic currency and methods for maintaining a reserve
of assets that substantiate the aforementioned electronic currency in the disclosed payment
system. In one exemplary aspect, the system comprises a management module, executable by
a computer processor, configured to create and manage one or more wallets of electronic
currency for a system operator and a plurality of clients, execute electronic currency payment
transactions by transferring electronic currency between one or more wallets of the system
operator and/or a plurality of clients and recording information about the executed
transactions in a private blockchain-based settlement network, manage information about the
reserve of assets substantiating the electronic currency and control in real-time purchase or
sale of assets on an external market in an amount required to fully substantiate the issued
electronic currency at each moment of time; and an issuance center, executable by a
computer processor, configured to receive in real-time information from the management
module concerning an amount of the reserve of assets substantiating the electronic currency,
perform centralized generation and controlled issuance of the electronic currency into
circulation, wherein the generation of all the electronic currency is performed in a single
block by creating this block in a blockchain using a mining operation that generates a
maximum possible amount of the electronic currency, and wherein the generated electronic
currency is issued into circulation in an amount equal to or less than the amount of the
reserve of assets substantiating it, when the amount of the reserve of assets reaches a
threshold amount, calculate, by the computer processor, in real-time, an amount of assets to
be sold or purchased on the external market in order to fully substantiate the issued electronic
currency based on a set of mathematical functions that account for distributions of moments
of time of receiving from the clients orders for purchasing or selling of electronic currency
using a fiat currency and size of the received orders, and transmit to the management module
an order to purchase or sell the calculated amount of assets, on the external market, to
maintain a sufficient amount of reserve to fully substantiate the electronic currency at each
moment of time.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In a power distribution system, an electricity meter plays an important role to measure the
electricity consumption for every single user to be presented to the supplier. In spite of
measuring the electricity, there are many issues regarding the “post-paid” electricity meter
such as high operational cost. The prepayment electricity meter was introduced to overcome
the issues of high operational cost borne by the supplier and to remove over-usage of
electricity for the customers. Most of the prepayment meters must have an Internet
connection in order to connect to the centralized services. Vendor normally selects the
suitable protocol to adopt this technology such as CoAP, MQTT, MQTT-SN, and Web
Socket. But, there are many challenges related to the centralized service such as privacy and
trust issues. The privacy issues appear as an uncontrollable massive amount of information
about specific meter is shared over the Internet. After the privacy issues were raised, we have
seen many prepayment meters were compromised, this will cause the owner of the
prepayment meter felt much hesitated to use the prepayment meter.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
For the prepayment meter we will attach the Raspberry Pi to it and then we let the electricity
flow throughout the meter while keeping track of electricity usage. Using the Wattcoins
Wallet in the smartphone, user can set up the policy and make Wattcoins transaction. For
example, the user can set the device to turn on power saving mode when the electricity usage
reached 100 KW. When the user deploys new configuration via smartphone, the data will be
sent to the Ethereum network and automatically give updates to the new configuration to the
prepayment meter. In the meantime, the prepayment meter keeps track of electricity usage
and updates it on Ethereum. Thus, three different processes are happening simultaneously.
Figure 1 shows the conceptual diagram of the system. The system involves six significance
identities: the Wattcoin wallet which is the mobile application or web application that provide
the front-end for the Billing system, the Smart Meter which is running the Ethereum Virtual
Client that connected to the Ethereum Blockchain Network, Ethereum network that consists
of many Ethereum nodes that connected each other, community that represent the people who
involved with the system to sell or buy the electricity asset and supplier that represent the
organization that provide the electricity. The user needs to download the Wattcoin wallet
application from the trusted source which means the Supplier will host the application to
some trusted hub so the user can trust the application and download it, thus he/she will install
the application. Then, the Wattocoin wallet application will generate a private and public key
and submit the public key to the Ethereum Network. The Ethereum network will receive the
public key and generate a wallet address and send it to the user. Once the user received the
wallet address from the blockchain network, he/she will install and export the wallet address
to the Smart Meter by accessing the front-end of the Smart Meter via web service provided
by the devices. When the installation of the smart meter succeeds, it will check for the wallet
address whether it has enough balance or not for the meter to supply the electricity to the
electrical appliance. If not, the user needs to buy some electricity tokens from the supplier.
The smart meter will calculate the electricity usage of every electrical appliance connected to
him. So, periodically the smart meter will interact with the Exhaustion Contract in order to
deduct the token from the user account and send the token to the supplier account. On the
other hand, the user also can buy the token from the community or their neighbor. Different
from the client-server model, Ethereum is a decentralized computing platform, which means
all the blockchain nodes have the same copy of the data. The raspberry pi will act as the
Ethereum Virtual Machine and connected to all Ethereum Virtual Machine and all nodes
maintaining the same databases. The front-end of the system is stored on smartphone, which
Wattcoins Wallet and connected to the Ethereum Virtual Machine via Remote Procedure
Code (RPC), Web3, and JavaScript. All transactions are executed and stored via consensus
algorithm, which means all the transactions are tamper proof. Besides, blockchain protects
the privacy of the user to stay anonymous by implementing pseudonymous. Furthermore, the
advantages of this blockchain technologies are to prevent the Denial-of-Service attack by
implementing Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. Ahead of a smart contract, meter
occasionally saves the electricity that has been used. Precisely, Raspberry Pi holding an
Ethereum account acts as a device that monitors meter and sends the value to Ethereum. So,
as to show the identity of the sender, it is necessary for the sender to send its public key and
signature along with the usage of electricity. The meter contract is really simple and
understandable. The prepayment meter is an Ethereum Virtual Machine that can sign and
send the transaction which contains value, public key and signature. Furthermore, each
contract contains its own address. Thus, it can identify where the data is sent in order to
execute the contract. All the contracts need to be compiled into byte code so it can be
executed into Ethereum Virtual Machine. Hence, it will increase the execution time. For
instance, the contract can be encoded as in Figure 2. Exhaustion Function is one of the
mechanisms in the meter that will automatically deduct the Wattcoin in every account based
on the rate and usage of the electricity. Then, there is also exhaustion account which is the
account of the electricity supplier, so the meter will periodically deduct the user’s Wattcoins
and sends the Wattcoin to the supplier account. Every meter needs to have an address in order
to interact with the other meters. The generation of the wallet address is derived from the
public key of the meter by using the Elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). The
advantage of the ECDSA is the key sized generated is much smaller than RSA by giving the
same security level as RSA. In order to generate a private key EDSA only select a number
from 1 to secp256k1n number and the private key is stored in the devices and secured by
password. After that, it uses the ECDSAPUBKEY function to generate public key. Then, it
utilises KECCAK-256 algorithm to derive the public key into a string and it takes the first
twenty bytes of the string as an address. To develop a web or mobile application as Wattcoins
wallet a gateway interface is needed in order to make the mobile or web application interacts
with the blockchain network. The gateway interface must provide a web socket connection,
this is because to access an account in the public ledger, a user needs to pass his private key
to the gateway server and the channel must be secured. The other advantages of the gateway
interface are the mobile devices do not need to download and synchronize their databases
with the blockchain public databases. Furthermore, Ethereum does not provide a lightweight
client for the Android operating system as well as apple operating system. The mobile
devices only communicate with the blockchain gateway interface by using Remote Procedure
Call (RPC) protocol.

WE CLAIMS
1. For the prepayment meter we will attach the Raspberry Pi to it and then we let the
electricity flow throughout the meter while keeping track of electricity usage. Using
the Wattcoins Wallet in the smartphone, user can set up the policy and make
Wattcoins transaction.
2. The prepayment meter is an Ethereum Virtual Machine that can sign and send the
transaction which contains value, public key and signature. Furthermore, each
contract contains its own address. Thus, it can identify where the data is sent in order
to execute the contract.
3. In order to generate a private key EDSA only select a number from 1 to secp256k1n
number and the private key is stored in the devices and secured by password. After
that, it uses the ECDSAPUBKEY function to generate public key. Then, it utilises
KECCAK-256 algorithm to derive the public key into a string and it takes the first
twenty bytes of the string as an address.