Smart contracts for fair and sustainable energy sharing

About the project

How can households, businesses and public organisations share renewable energy fairly? In this project, you'll use game theory, distributed AI and agent-based simulation to develop smart contracts that support collaboration, distribute costs and energy, and encourage participation. You'll investigate policies that make clean energy partnerships viable and sustainable.

Renewable energy is often generated close to where it is needed, yet sharing it across organisations and communities raises challenging questions. Who should collaborate, how should the costs of setting up a collaboration be shared, and how should energy and benefits be allocated as generation and demand change?

In this project, you will investigate smart contracts for fair and sustainable energy sharing. Applications may include households sharing locally generated electricity, businesses in an industrial park using energy generated by one firm’s solar panels, and collaborations involving council-owned properties and infrastructure, such as bus stops and car parks.

You'll explore how to:

You'll draw on cooperative game theory, mechanism design, multiagent/distributed AI, mathematical optimisation and agent-based simulation. You'll develop and evaluate models that account for changing generation and demand, participant preferences, fairness and incentives to remain in a collaboration. You may also consider how contract rules support transparent and accountable decisions.

Your research will aim to produce methods and evidence to support energy communities, industrial partners and local authorities in designing effective collaborations. You may examine Power Purchase Agreements and the proposed Complex Site Classes (P441) as contractual and regulatory contexts for energy sharing.

The School of Electronics and Computer Science is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.

• identify beneficial and stable coalitions of energy producers and users
• allocate the initial costs of establishing an energy-sharing collaboration
• design dynamic smart contracts that specify how energy, ongoing costs and benefits are shared during operation
• evaluate policies and incentives, such as subsidies or pricing mechanisms, that encourage participation and make clean energy collaborations viable

Dr Vahid Yazdanpanah

• Multiagent (AI) Systems
• Agent-Based Computing
• Responsibility of AI Systems

Dr Stephanie Gauthier MSc PhD FHEA

• Energy demand;
• Built environment;
• Behaviour change;

Professor Sebastian Stein

• Citizen-Centric Artificial Intelligence Systems
• Mechanism Design and Incentive Engineering in Multi-Agent Systems
• Applications of AI in smart energy, transportation, electric vehicle charging and disaster response

Entry requirements

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent , in one of the following:

Applicants must be eligible for UK (home) tuition fees or qualify for the University of Southampton’s Horizon Europe fee waiver. Please check the Horizon Europe fee waiver eligibility criteria to confirm whether you qualify.

• computer science
• artificial intelligence
• operations research
• economics
• applied mathematics
• a related discipline

Fees and funding

We offer a range of funding opportunities for both UK and international students. Horizon Europe fee waivers automatically cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for qualifying students.

Competition-based Presidential Bursaries from the University cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for top-ranked applicants.

Competition-based studentships offered by our schools typically cover UK-level tuition fees and a stipend for living costs for top-ranked applicants.

Funding will be awarded on a rolling basis, so apply early for the best opportunity to be considered.

For more information, please visit our postgraduate research funding pages .

How to apply

Apply now

You need to:

Applications should include:

• choose programme type (Research), 2027/28, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
• select Full time or Part time
• search for programme PhD Computer Science (7089)
• add name of the supervisor in section 2 of the application
• research proposal
• your CV (resumé)
• 2 academic references
• degree transcripts and certificates to date
• English language qualification (if applicable)

Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences

For questions about applying, email our Doctoral College (doctoralcollege-admissions@soton.ac.uk) .

Project leader

For an initial conversation, email Dr Vahid Yazdanpanah (V.Yazdanpanah@soton.ac.uk) .

Research areas