A Peer-to-Peer-Based Service Infrastructure for Distributed Power Generation

The shift towards decentralization in power generation raises the need for a largescale control infrastructure to support a high number of distributed power generators. Peer-topeer computing provides self-organizing, Internet-scale infrastructures being resilient to node failure, which makes peer-to-peer seem a natural basis for a large-scale control application. However, raw peer-to-peer overlays lack certain properties that are crucial in a distributed power generation scenario, like a messaging service, a public key infrastructure for implementing security, etc. Therefore, the peer-to-peer overlay must be complemented by a set of service layer components fulfilling the application requirements. In this paper, we present an industrial case study where generic service components are applied on top of a peer-to-peer overlay, forming a reliable control infrastructure for distributed power generation. To illustrate our results, we present a detailed evaluation of the level of reliability achieved with the combination of a messaging service, and a replication service.