e-Traceroute: Physically traceable electricity routing for carbon-free energy utilization

Abstract

Maximizing the self-consumption of residential photovoltaic generation is a promising pathway to meet urgent decarbonization targets for 2030 (and even for 2035). A viable solution is to create a sharing economy for idle battery capacity within a community. To achieve this, utilizing shared physical assets necessitates complete physical traceability of power flows---the capability to strictly trace the ownership of stored energy among multiple participants. Furthermore, physical traceability is an essential function for demonstrating the use of carbon-free energy resources. Such tracing is impossible in conventional systems owing to two fundamental limitations: the mixing of power flows in a common bus and the decoupling of power and information delivery. This study presents a novel physical-layer technology, called e-Traceroute, that overcomes these limitations and realizes physically traceable electricity exchanges. Specifically, physically distinguishable power routing and data transmission are unified over the same power lines. Prototyping experiments demonstrate successful integration of power transfers and information transactions, validating that the proposed system serves as a physical foundation for a reliable and scalable sharing economy that drives bottom-up decarbonization.