Ali Dorri, Ambrose Hill, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak · 6 authors
Blockchain is increasingly being used as a distributed, anonymous, trustless framework for energy trading in smart grids. However, most of the existing solutions suffer from reliance on Trusted Third Parties (TTP), lack of privacy, and traffic and processing overheads. In our previous work, we have proposed a Secure Private Blockchain-based framework (SPB) for energy trading to address the aforementioned challenges. In this paper, we present a proof-on-concept implementation of SPB on the Ethereum private network to demonstrates SPB's applicability for energy trading. We benchmark SPB's performance against the relevant state-of-the-art. The implementation results demonstrate that SPB incurs lower overheads and monetary cost for end users to trade energy compared to existing solutions.
Byung-Wan Jo, Rana Muhammad Asad Khan, Yun‐Sung Lee
The Internet-of-things (IoT) and blockchain are growing realities of modern society, and both are rapidly transforming civilization, either separately or in combination. However, the leverage of both technologies for structural health monitoring (SHM) to enable transparent information sharing among involved parties and autonomous decision making has not yet been achieved. Therefore, this study combines IoT with blockchain-based smart contracts for SHM of underground structures to define a novel, efficient, scalable, and secure distributed network for enhancing operational safety. In this blockchain-IoT network, the characteristics of locally centralized and globally decentralized distribution have been activated by dividing them into core and edge networks. This division enhances the efficiency and scalability of the system. The proposed system was effective in simulation for autonomous monitoring and control of structures. After proper design, the decentralized blockchain networks may effectively be deployed for transparent and efficient information sharing, smart contracts-based autonomous decision making, and data security in SHM.
Smart Grids is an emerging technology promising significant changes in the economy and the social sphere. One among many challenges in their development and distribution is security. Considering recent hackers attacks on energy grids and taking into account the distributed structure of these systems the use of traditional means of computer protection and the search for a crime figure becomes more difficult or impossible. In this article, we introduce some application areas of smart grid forensic science, discuss the opportunities, and outline the open issues in the topic. We summarized challenges for forensic in Smart Grids in connection with a Blockchain and proposed a decentralized transaction platform based on Blockchain tailored to the energy sector with all the latest technology such as advanced metering infrastructure, distributed generation, etc.
Energy storage units (ESUs) enable several attractive features of modern smart grids such as enhanced grid resilience, effective demand response, and reduced bills. However, uncoordinated charging of ESUs stresses the power system and can lead to a blackout. On the other hand, existing charging coordination mechanisms suffer from several limitations. First, the need for a central charging coordinator (CC) presents a single point of failure that jeopardizes the effectiveness of the charging coordination. Second, a transparent charging coordination mechanism does not exist where users are not aware whether the CC is honest or not in coordination charging requests among them in a fair way. Third, existing mechanisms overlook the privacy concerns of the involved customers. To address these limitations, in this paper, we leverage the blockchain and smart contracts to build a decentralized charging coordination mechanism without the need for a centralized charging coordinator. First ESUs should use tokens for anonymously authenticate themselves to the blockchain. Then each ESU sends a charging request that contains its State-of-Charge (SoC), Time-to-complete-charge (TCC) and amount of required charging to the smart contract address on the blockchain. The smart contract will then run the charging coordination mechanism in a self-executed manner such that ESUs with the highest priorities are charged in the present time slot while charging requests of lower priority ESUs are deferred to future time slots. In this way, each ESU can make sure that charging schedules are computed correctly. Finally, we have implemented the proposed mechanism on the Ethereum test-bed blockchain, and our analysis shows that execution cost can be acceptable in terms of gas consumption while enabling decentralized charging coordination with increased transparency, reliability, and privacy preserving.
George Suciu, Carmen Nădrag, Cristiana Istrate, Alexandru Vulpe · 6 authors
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) refers to a digital method for registering virtual transactions and other similar data in multiple locations simultaneously. The main characteristic of distributed ledgers is that they do not have a central administration component, due to advanced algorithms and methods used for record-keeping. Thus, transactions are faster and reasonable, as they do not require a central authority to validate them. The network is formed by multiple nodes through which the participant can access recordings, making the network become less vulnerable when referring to cyberattacks. After several years of technological development in this area, different distributed ledger technologies are available. This article presents Blockchain and Tangle technologies along with their main characteristics, in order to make an extended comparison of their approaches. In addition to this, the paper contains experimentation details and results for each technology presented.
The state parameters of electrical equipment and power system control parameters are the key data to realize the precise control and cooperative autonomy of a cyber physical power system. The trustworthiness of the data is the primary condition to guarantee the electric power system’s safe and reliable operation. In the traditional centralized data acquisition and management architecture, the security and trustworthiness completely depend on the central main server. A small mistake in the main server will result in data loss, which is irreversible and fatal. Blockchain technique combines the dispersed data with mutual backup and retrieval mechanism, which guarantees that the data cannot be tampered with and forged privately. Based on the blockchain technology, this article proposes a novel data trustworthy acquisition model with high credibility, applied to a self-organized cyber physical power system. In order to overcome the long time-consuming process of building traditional blockchains, a new on-demand data transmission routing algorithm with M/M/1/k queuing model is proposed in this article. Different scales of IEEE standard bus systems are employed as experimental examples to evaluate the algorithm’s performance. The results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively shorten the time consumption of blockchain construction and realize the data trustworthiness of cyber physical power system.
Pietro Danzi, Sarah Hambridge, Čedomir Stefanović, Petar Popovski
In the power grid, the Balance Responsible Parties (BRPs) purchase energy based on a forecast of the user consumption. The forecasts are imperfect, and the corrections of their real-time deviations are managed by a System Operator (SO), which charges the BRPs for the procured imbalances. Flexible consumers, associated with a BRP, can be involved in a demand response (DR) program to reduce the imbalance costs. However, running the DR program requires the BRP to invest resources in the infrastructure and increases its operating costs. To limit the intervention of BRP, we implement the DR via a blockchain smart contract. Moreover, to reduce the delay of publication of the imbalance price, caused by the inefficient accounting process of the current balancing markets, a second blockchain is adopted at the SO layer, procuring a fast and auditable credit settlements. The feasibility of the proposed architecture is evaluated over an Ethereum blockchain platform. The results show that block chains can enable a high automation of the balancing market, by providing (i) the implementation of aggregators with low operating cost and (ii) the timely and transparent access to the balancing information, thus fostering new business models for the BRPs.
Astrid Nieße, Norman Ihle, Stephan Balduin, Matthias Postina · 6 authors
Congestion management in distribution grids is an important task for distribution grid operators, both from a financial and a technological perspective. Whereas large generation units and large controllable loads might in general be controllable in a manual way, this is no option for small distributed generators and loads. With flexibility control in multiple owner scenarios, documentation, transparency and automation are of crucial importance. In this work, we present a fully automated congestion management approach based on a combination of distributed ledger technology and distributed algorithms in an agent-based architectural approach. We present a case study focused on the visualization of the concept and discuss the advantages and possible challenges for this approach. Whereas distributed ledger technology has been introduced for peer-to-peer energy trading within the last years, no similar approach has been presented yet for stable distribution grid management.
Jaysson Guerrero, Archie C. Chapman, Gregor Verbič
The increasing uptake of distributed energy resources (DERs) in distribution systems and the rapid advance of technology have established new scenarios in the operation of low-voltage networks. In particular, recent trends in cryptocurrencies and blockchain have led to a proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading schemes, which allow the exchange of energy between the neighbors without any intervention of a conventional intermediary in the transactions. Nevertheless, far too little attention has been paid to the technical constraints of the network under this scenario. A major challenge to implementing P2P energy trading is that of ensuring that network constraints are not violated during the energy exchange. This paper proposes a methodology based on sensitivity analysis to assess the impact of P2P transactions on the network and to guarantee an exchange of energy that does not violate network constraints. The proposed method is tested on a typical UK low-voltage network. The results show that our method ensures that energy is exchanged between users under the P2P scheme without violating the network constraints, and that users can still capture the economic benefits of the P2P architecture.
The penetration of renewable energy resources and demand response programs causes several management issues, such as network instability. Several research projects are currently investigating and surveying several methods to enhance the network reliability. This paper represents a smart model of community grid that contains a central management unit and several consumers, producers and prosumers. In the proposed model, the community manager is able to control the consumption and generation of the resources by establishing contracts with its members. The community manager utilizes a single period optimization problem for minimizing its operation costs by applying different types of demand response programs and the use of renewable resources. In the case study, an internal low voltage distribution network of a real university campus is considered as the community grid, in order to test and validate the proposed model.
Ross Guttromson, Stephen Verzi, Lon Andrew Dawson, Drew Levin · 10 authors
This project explored coupling modeling and analysis methods from multiple domains to address complex hybrid (cyber and physical) attacks on mission critical infrastructure. Robust methods to integrate these complex systems are necessary to enable large trade-space exploration including dynamic and evolving cyber threats and mitigations. Reinforcement learning employing deep neural networks, as in the AlphaGo Zero solution, was used to identify "best" (or approximately optimal) resilience strategies for operation of a cyber/physical grid model. A prototype platform was developed and the machine learning (ML) algorithm was made to play itself in a game of 'Hurt the Grid'. This proof of concept shows that machine learning optimization can help us understand and control complex, multi-dimensional grid space. A simple, yet high-fidelity model proves that the data have spatial correlation which is necessary for any optimization or control. Our prototype analysis showed that the reinforcement learning successfully improved adversary and defender knowledge to manipulate the grid. When expanded to more representative models, this exact type of machine learning will inform grid operations and defense - supporting mitigation development to defend the grid from complex cyber attacks! This same research can be expanded to similar complex domains.
Open access
Smart Grid Security and Resilience
Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems
Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis
The Energy Internet has become a hot topic for the integration of sustainable energies. However, as a result, there are numerous sustainable energy forms and participants, the system is extremely complex, and some key issues are difficult to overcome, such as the control and management of distributed sustainable energy forms. On the other hand, blockchain technology consists of distributed data storage, peer-to-peer transmission, a consensus mechanism, encryption algorithms, and smart contracts. Applying the technical advantages of the blockchain to the Energy Internet can solve many of the problems that hinder its development. The purpose of this paper is to review the development of blockchain and the Energy Internet, and provide some references for the possible applications of blockchain technology to the Energy Internet. Firstly, the definition and characteristics of blockchain and the Energy Internet are introduced in detail. Secondly, the compatibility of the two is analyzed. Then, several application scenarios of blockchain in the Energy Internet are put forward. Finally, the challenges that still exist when applying the current blockchain technology to the Energy Internet are analyzed.
This paper reports on how the technology behind cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) i.e. Blockchain could offer its services in distributed energy system (DES), noting on the issues related to operating conditions, energy generation monitoring, energy sharing and trading, financial flows, emission inventory, carbon emission trading and many more. Information on blockchain implication in DES is reported.
Modern power systems are rapidly evolving into complex cyber-physical systems. The increasingly complex interaction among different energy entities calls for a secure, efficient, and robust cyber infrastructure. As an emerging distributed computing technology, Blockchain provides a secure environment to support such interactions. This paper gives a prospective on using Blockchain as a secure, distributed cyber infrastructure for the future grid. Firstly, the basic principles of Blockchain and its state-of-the-art are introduced. Then, a Blockchain based smart grid cyber-physical infrastructure model is proposed. Afterwards, some promising application domains of Blockchain in future grids are presented. Following this, some potential challenges are discussed.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
DAO attack showed that formal verification of smart contracts is an important issue that should be addressed to prevent irreversible consequences due to design faults activation in Blockchain applications. This paper proposes a modeling method of an Ethereum application based on smart contracts, with the aim of applying a formal method, namely Model-Checking, to verify that the application implementation complies with its specification, formalized by a set of temporal logic propositions. NuSMV tool has been chosen to support this first approach. The proposed model template is shaped by three layers capturing respectively the behavior of Ethereum blockchain, the smart contracts themselves and the execution framework. The approach is illustrated by a case study coming from energy market field.
The amalgamation of information and communication technologies in power industry has led to a revolution known as smart grid (SG). The energy consumers interact with the power utility using a bidirectional communication channel for energy trading in SG ecosystem. However, the traditional energy trading mechanisms strongly rely on trusted third parties which act as a single point of failure. Therefore, it is important to equip SG with a decentralized and secure energy trading system which can execute contracts and handle negotiations among various trading parties. Hence, in this paper, EnergyChain, a blockchain model for storing and accessing the data generated by smart homes in a secure manner is proposed. EnergyChain works in following phases: 1) a miner node is selected on the basis of power capacity of various smart homes, 2) a block creation and validation scheme is presented, and 3) a transaction handling mechanism is designed for secure energy trading. After evaluation, the superiority of EnergyChain is validated. The results obtained show that EnergyChain outperforms the traditional scheme in terms of communication costs and computation time.
Intelligence is one of the most important aspects in the development of our future communities. Ranging from smart home to smart building to smart city, all these smart infrastructures must be supported by intelligent power supply. Smart grid is proposed to solve all challenges of future electricity supply. In smart grid, in order to realize optimal scheduling, an SM is installed at each home to collect the near-real-time electricity consumption data, which can be used by the utilities to offer better smart home services. However, the near-real-time data may disclose a user's private information. An adversary may track the application usage patterns by analyzing the user's electricity consumption profile. In this article, we propose a privacy-preserving and efficient data aggregation scheme. We divide users into different groups, and each group has a private blockchain to record its members' data. To preserve the inner privacy within a group, we use pseudonyms to hide users' identities, and each user may create multiple pseudonyms and associate his/ her data with different pseudonyms. In addition, the bloom filter is adopted for fast authentication. The analysis shows that the proposed scheme can meet the security requirements and achieve better performance than other popular methods.
Christian Berger, Birgit Penzenstadler, Olaf Drögehorn
Innovation in the world of today is mainly driven by software. Companies need to continuously rejuvenate their product portfolios with new features to stay ahead of their competitors. For example, recent trends explore the application of blockchains to domains other than finance. This paper analyzes the state-of-the-art for safety-critical systems as found in modern vehicles like self-driving cars, smart energy systems, and home automation focusing on specific challenges where key ideas behind blockchains might be applicable. Next, potential benefits unlocked by applying such ideas are presented and discussed for the respective usage scenario. Finally, a research agenda is outlined to summarize remaining challenges for successfully applying blockchains to safety-critical cyber-physical systems.
This paper describes the proof of concept of a blockchain based organization of a local low voltage energy community. The focus of the concept is efficient use of shared resources to minimize external dependence, and not energy trading. A previously proposed control algorithm, which exploits the power dependency of the efficiency of electrical energy storages, is implemented as a smart contract on a private instance of an Ethereum blockchain to coordinate the operation. It is implemented using four connected Raspberry Pis representing the participating households with pre-given electrical load and photovoltaic conversion as well as a battery. Each household runs an Ethereum full node and an interfacing software. Only the energy technology components are simulated, while the blockchain is actually running on the Raspberry Pis in order to mind the full complexity of the technology. The practicability is proved in a test run and positive effects on the efficiency and the self-sufficiency within the community are observed. A first cost-benefit estimate is given and a further research agenda is presented.
Recently, advancements in energy distribution models have fulfilled the needs of microgrids in finding a suitable energy distribution model between producer and consumer without the need of central controlling authority. Most of the energy distribution model deals with energy transactions and losses without considering the security aspects such as information tampering. The transaction data could be accessible online to keep track of the energy distribution between the consumer and producer (e.g., online payment records and supplier profiles). However this data is prone to modification and misuse if a consumer moves from one producer to other. Blockchain is considered to be one solution to allow users to exchange energy related data and keep track of it without exposing it to modification. In this paper, electrical transactions embedded in blockchain are validated using the signatures of multiple producers based on their assigned attributes. These signatures are verified and endorsed by the consumers satisfying those attributes without revealing any information. The public and private keys for these consumers are generated by the producers and endorsement procedure using these keys ensures that these consumers are authorized. This approach does not need any central authority. To resist against collision attacks, producers are given a secret pseudorandom function seed. The comparative analysis shows the efficiency of proposed approach over the existing ones.
Michael Mylrea, Sri Nikhil Gupta Gourisetti, Heather Culley
The following landscape analysis explores blockchain or distributed ledger technologies application to securing electricity infrastructure. The exploration of how distributed ledger technologies can be used to increase the trustworthiness and integrity of the grid’s edge is imperative to the economic, security and well-being of all modern societies that rely on electricity. Blockchain technology’s ability to secure, track and optimize complex data transactions provides an exciting value proposition to securing and optimizing the U.S. power grid. An energy delivery system (EDS) operating at the grid’s edge requires unprecedented levels of security and trustworthiness to verify integrity of data and manage complex transactive and distributed Energy Resources (DERs) exchanges. Moreover, grid-edge devices lack visibility, control and security to conduct real-time energy transactions with the required security, speed and scale. The U.S. power grid is a complex system of systems that requires secure, reliable and trustworthy EDSs. Grid modernization has increased the speed and size of data sets exchanged on these systems (Gordes and Mylrea 2014). Exasperating the challenge is these systems are increasingly distributed creating new data fidelity and interoperability challenges for grid operators struggling to balance and incorporate DERs. Blockchain technology provides an atomically verifiable cryptographic signature to help increase the trustworthiness of EDSs at the grid’s edge. This feature is especially important at distribution level since EDSs and field devices have increasing operational and security requirements that are often diametrically opposed. For example, as data, speed and analytic requirements increase, security and functionality requirements increase. Further, as the grid’s edge incorporate DERs and transacts in real time, availability is prioritized over the integrity and confidentially of that data. Blockchain presents the prospect of solving some of these complex challenges related to grid security and modernization. However, there are more questions about blockchain applicability than answers. There are number of theoretical blockchain applications to the energy sector, but few energy utilities have actually applied, implemented or even experimented with the underlying distributed ledger technology and consensus algorithms that enable blockchain to exchange data more efficiently and securely.
Crowdsourcing relies on people's contributions to meet product- or system-level objectives. Crowdsourcing-based methods have been implemented in various cyber-physical systems and realtime markets. This paper explores a framework for Crowdsourced Energy Systems (CES), where small-scale energy generation or energy trading is crowdsourced from distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, and shapable loads. The merits/pillars of energy crowdsourcing are discussed. Then, an operational model for CESs in distribution networks with different types of crowdsourcees is proposed. The model yields a market equilibrium depicting traditional and distributed generator and load setpoints. Given these setpoints, crowdsourcing incentives are designed to steer crowdsourcees to the equilibrium. As the number of crowdsourcees and energy trading transactions scales up, a secure energy trading platform is required. To that end, the presented framework is integrated with a lightweight Blockchain implementation and smart contracts. Numerical tests are provided to showcase the overall implementation.
In this paper, we investigate the use of decentralized blockchain mechanisms for delivering transparent, secure, reliable, and timely energy flexibility, under the form of adaptation of energy demand profiles of Distributed Energy Prosumers, to all the stakeholders involved in the flexibility markets (Distribution System Operators primarily, retailers, aggregators, etc.). In our approach, a blockchain based distributed ledger stores in a tamper proof manner the energy prosumption information collected from Internet of Things smart metering devices, while self-enforcing smart contracts programmatically define the expected energy flexibility at the level of each prosumer, the associated rewards or penalties, and the rules for balancing the energy demand with the energy production at grid level. Consensus based validation will be used for demand response programs validation and to activate the appropriate financial settlement for the flexibility providers. The approach was validated using a prototype implemented in an Ethereum platform using energy consumption and production traces of several buildings from literature data sets. The results show that our blockchain based distributed demand side management can be used for matching energy demand and production at smart grid level, the demand response signal being followed with high accuracy, while the amount of energy flexibility needed for convergence is reduced.
With the development of the blockchain technology, and applications of blockchain technologies more and more widely, we can apply the Blockchains to Industrial Control System(ICS) for network security. The key technology of blockchain include: distributed ledge, asymmetric cryptography, consensus algorithm and smart contract. The goal of our works is to realize industrial control system network security and make that is reliable, safety, high efficiency and low cost. We will explain how to apply blockchain technology to industrial control system network for cybersecurity, and also explain how blockchains works and why blockchains technology can realize the cybersecurity of ICS, then describe how blockchains combine with IoT to realize IoT network security and build blockchain-based ICS cybersecurity architecture modal. We also point out a series of problems that should be considered before the deployment of a blockchains network in ICS and Jot Form data transfer to data storage and data management, blockchains technology can solve these problems well include data transfer insecurity, machine malfunction, data storage insecurity and so on. Our solution is that blockchains network replace Industrial Control systems Field network, our conclusion is that blockchains technology can resolve ICS network security and provide a solution for IoT security, Industrial control network security based on blockchain is very meaningful and feasible.