In recent years, blockchain technology has gained widespread attention for its distributed and immutable ledger system that ensures security and transparency. However, the decentralized nature of the blockchain network also presents unique challenges in detecting fraudulent activities, such as money laundering, phishing, and other illicit transactions that may be executed by malicious actors. The traditional detection methods, such as rule-based systems, may not be sufficient to capture the complex and evolving nature of these activities. This paper proposes an anomaly detection approach for significant entity identification within Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX) blockchain network using unsupervised machine learning. The proposed approach was evaluated by utilizing three detection algorithms (CBLOF, AE, and IF) for assigning an anomaly score to each account in the dataset. The results indicate the presence of potentially fraudulent activities and the effectiveness of the anomaly ranking mechanism in identifying such cases.
In addition to the physical security of energy networks, cyber security is essential to protecting these systems as well. Cyber threats can stem from malicious hackers who have infiltrated the networks to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data, or from vulnerabilities within the systems themselves. It is increasingly important that smart grid companies invest in cyber security solutions, such as strong passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, and regular software updates, to counteract these threats. Additionally, it is beneficial for organizations to create incident response plans that are tailored to their specific needs, and which define the chain of command and actions to take in the case of an incident. To details the usage of smart grids in various domains and places in an effective way and explains the efficient way of consuming power for smart ventilators by monitoring and providing cyber security against cyber-attacks. The distributed power from various regions is collected from the less predominant places and supplied to the smart ventilators through smart inverters.
Ali Yassine, Mohamed Baza, Sherif Abdelfattah, Mahmoud M. Badr · 6 authors
The smart grid was introduced as an evolved version of the traditional power grid to enable two-way communication between consumers and electricity providers. It aims to distribute energy generation points that utilize renewable energy and enable energy trading among users. However, this grid has an increasing number of components, including consumers, prosumers, generation plants, and electric vehicles. Managing them using a centralized architecture approach introduces several challenges such as single points of failure and cyberattacks. To address this issue, blockchain technology was proposed as an infrastructure to secure the smart grid. The latter provides a distributed ledger that handles transactions in a safe environment. However, despite all its advantages, blockchain has several scalability and privacy protection issues. In this paper, we highlight the state-of-the-art of blockchain-based smart grids works. The article also provides a comprehensive survey on the challenges that face blockchain-based smart grids and points out timely future research topics.
The control of future power grids is migrating from a centralized to a distributed/decentralized scheme to enable a massive penetration of distributed energy resources with rising dependence on communication infrastructure. A common assumption made for most existing distributed/decentralized controllers is that local controllers would faithfully follow the designated controller dynamics based on the data received from communication channels. However, with increased probability of cyberattacks on Operational Technology infrastructure, such an assumption could be risky because proper execution of the controller dynamics is then built on trust in secure communication and computation. In this work, we leverage a cryptography technology known as zero-knowledge scalable transparent arguments of knowledge (zk-STARK) to verify the computational integrity of power grid control algorithms, with projected linear dynamics-based control schemes as the initial proof-of-concept test case. The method presented here converts the cybersecurity challenge of data integrity for grid control into a subset of computational integrity.
As the proportion of renewable energy sources in the energy system rises, new market approaches are needed to pricing and distribute the unsteady and dispersed generation. Markets for locally generated renewable energy that are decentralized and accessible to consumers and prosumers create a virtuous cycle of supply and demand. We provide a complete model of a local energy market serving 100 houses, including an explanation of how the market works and a simulation of how it might function. In order to highlight the decentralized character of regional energy markets, our approach is predicated on a distributed ledger system, sometimes known as a private blockchain. As a consequence, we give end-users and prosumers of energy a decentralized marketplace where they may trade locally produced energy directly with one another. We also present a preliminary economic assessment of the market mechanism and an agenda for further research into the technological assessment of blockchain technology as the principal information and communication technology for the local energy market.
With the advancement of distributed generation and information technology, energy trading in micro grid (MG) becomes popular in recent years. However, due to the lack of authority management in the MG, the traditional energy trading method with trusted system operator (SO) and market operator (MO) is no longer suitable. This paper proposes a novel, secure and privacy-preserving energy trading architecture with the state-of-the-art cryptosystem. Firstly, a zero-knowledge-proof based non-interactive protocol is proposed to authenticate prosumers. Next, a novel energy data evaluation method is proposed to achieve privacy-preserving power pricing and dispatching with the homomorphic encryption. Moreover, a lightweight tree-chained trading book is proposed to protect the transaction information. Then, we analysis the security performance and emphasize the advantages of our proposed architecture. At last, we exam the performance of our proposed methods in the IEEE benchmark systems. We observe that, our proposed architecture could achieve the privacy-preserving and secure energy trading in a low-time-cost but high-accuracy way.
The digitalization trend is prominent in a wide variety of sectors, and the energy sector is no exception. The incorporation of blockchain, a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), in energy services has been examined in literature and quite a few endeavors of DLT adoption in energy applications have been implemented by companies, universities and other organizations. The European LIFE project “InEExS” pursues to apply DLT through specific business cases, so as to offer improved digital energy services and encourage energy efficiency. In this paper, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis has been conducted as a first stage of DLT potential usages evaluation in the contexts of the InEExS, with the purpose of demonstrating the reasons why blockchain could support the digitalization of energy applications and acceleration of energy transition, while pointing out the most important barriers that should be addressed to ensure that DLT integration would be truly beneficial. The decentralized nature of blockchain, combined with the transparency and safety it provides, make it a very promising technology for energy management and trading implementations, among others. However, technical constraints, such as the scalability problem, security threats, as well as sociopolitical and regulatory barriers should not be neglected. The findings of our SWOT analysis are combined with an assessment of prospective blockchain usages in the business cases deployed by the InEExS, so that the best practices to optimally exploit DLT in various energy applications, within and beyond the project, are identified.
David Vangulick, S.J. Escalona Coronel, Damien Ernst
Grid monitoring is the process of collecting data from sensors across a distribution grid and sending it to a central system (SCADA) to identify and diagnose problems, improve reliability, and save energy and money. The increasing complexity of power flows and the need to manage them using active network management (ANM) strategies requires accurate data and strong defences against cyberattacks. A proof-of-concept software called "MonitORES" was developed using Hyperledger Fabric to demonstrate how a distributed ledger technology (DLT) such as blockchain can be used to monitor and control generation units within ANM schemes, with improved resilience against cyberattacks.
The total number of solar power-producing facilities whose Feed-in Tariff (FIT) Program-based ten-year contracts will expire by 2023 is expected to reach approximately 1.65 million in Japan. If the facilities that produce or consume renewable energy would increase to reach a large number, e.g., two million, blockchain would not be capable of processing all the transactions. In this work, we propose a blockchain-based electricity-tracking platform for renewable energy, called ‘ZGridBC,’ which consists of mutually cooperative two novel decentralized schemes to solve scalability, storage cost, and privacy issues at the same time. One is the electricity production resource management, which is an efficient data management scheme that manages electricity production resources (EPRs) on the blockchain by using UTXO tokens extended to two-dimension (period and electricity amount) to prevent double-spending. The other is the electricity-tracking proof, which is a massive data aggregation scheme that significantly reduces the amount of data managed on the blockchain by using zero-knowledge proof (ZKP). Thereafter, we illustrate the architecture of ZGridBC, consider its scalability, security, and privacy, and illustrate the implementation of ZGridBC. Finally, we evaluate the scalability of ZGridBC, which handles two million electricity facilities with far less cost per environmental value compared with the price of the environmental value proposed by METI (=0.3 yen/kWh).
Liu Shenglong, Ge Zhang, Jiawei Jiang, Xin Zhou · 5 authors
With the application of new technologies such as Internet of Things and big data in smart grid industry, new power systems based on new energy sources have emerged in response to the call of “Peak carbon, carbon neutrality.” The power grid enterprise concentrates the data assets and business access to the data external service, which needs to connect a large number of data sources. Ensuring the authenticity of the data without tampering becomes a big challenge. The power system adopts the identity authentication mechanism to resist the security attack and protect the sensitive data. However, in the process of user authentication, the sending of real identity information will lead to the reduction of system privacy, which is easy to cause the leakage of sensitive data. This paper proposes an anonymous authentication mechanism based on zero-knowledge proof for power system, which authenticates the server without revealing the identity. This mechanism uses zero-knowledge proof algorithm to design an anonymous authentication protocol framework, which consists of three stages: registration, mutual authentication and revocation. In this method, anonymous certificate and elliptic curve encryption technology are used to realize the anonymity and authenticity of users. The mechanism effectively protects the user's real identity information and maintains the sensitive data in the power system.
The Internet of Energy (IoE) is a distributed paradigm that leverages smart networks and distributed system technologies to enable decentralized energy systems. In contrast to the traditional centralized energy systems, distributed Energy Internet systems comprise multiple components and communication requirements that demand innovative technologies for decentralization, reliability, efficiency, and security. Recent advances in blockchain architectures, smart contracts, and distributed federated learning technologies have opened up new opportunities for realizing decentralized Energy Internet services. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis and classification of state-of-the-art solutions that employ blockchain, smart contracts, and federated learning for the IoE domains. Specifically, we identify four representative system models and discuss their key aspects. These models demonstrate the diverse ways in which blockchain, smart contracts, and federated learning can be integrated to support the main domains of IoE, namely distributed energy trading and sharing, smart microgrid energy networks, and electric and connected vehicle management. Furthermore, we provide a detailed comparison of the different levels of decentralization, the advantages of federated learning, and the benefits of using blockchain for the IoE systems. Additionally, we identify open issues and areas for future research for integrating federated learning and blockchain in the Internet of Energy domains.
The emergence of the Internet of Energy (IoE) has paved the way for decentralized energy trading, which involves the exchange of energy among prosumers (both producers and consumers) in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. Smart energy meters, which can measure the energy consumption and production of prosumers, play a critical role in IoE-based energy trading. However, the lack of trust and transparency among prosumers and energy traders is a major barrier to the widespread adoption of P2P energy trading. In this context, Ethereum smart contracts can provide a solution by enabling transparent and secure execution of energy trading agreements among prosumers. This paper proposes an energy trading system that leverages Ethereum smart contracts and smart energy meters to enable P2P energy trading in the IoE. This work describes the architecture of the system and the implementation details of the smart contracts used for energy trading. This paper has presented a case pseudo code for an efficient and secure approach to trade energy based on Ethereum. It moved most of the processing and storage off-chain (in opposition to several existing solutions) to minimize the cost of using Blockchain, in terms of gas paid to process and store data related to smart. This was done while keeping the trading process as secure as when all processing and storage are performed on-chain. It also made use of stable coins to overcome the exchange rate instability of cryptocurrencies.
Kimia Honari, Sara Rouhani, Nida E. Falak, Yuan Liu · 8 authors
Blockchain technology and, in particular, smart contracts based on it, offers a new, decentralized mechanism for entering into and fulfilling contracts in diverse markets. Energy markets are no exception, and indeed, the decentralized nature of the blockchain may be particularly important for them as the penetration of residential prosumers offering microgeneration to the grid grows. At this time, however, the literature on smart contracts in energy markets—and particularly their interaction with the technical infrastructure of the smart grid—is limited and scattered. There is a need to consolidate these studies into a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art in smart contract design for the smart grid. However, no existing reviews focus on smart contracts in energy systems. The scope of our study is the role of smart contracts in energy systems and what limitations they encounter. We conduct a systematic review of this topic, focusing on systems that have been implemented as prototypes. These studies provide key evidence on the scalability of smart contracts for energy systems and their interaction with the technical elements of the smart grid. We selected a pool of 76 papers meeting our criteria, with three others excluded for misinterpreting fundamental aspects of blockchains and smart contracts. After reviewing each paper, we found that this literature falls into four categories: market operations, ancillary services, auditing and monitoring, and cybersecurity. We then identify and examine the cross-cutting concerns of data storage in and interoperability between blockchains. We finally discuss the implications of our findings for future research. In particular, there is likely to be a complex interplay between the data generated and stored via the blockchain versus the data required to meet energy system reliability targets and market obligations for participants.
Antonio Cabrera, Encarnación Castillo, Antonio Escobar-Molero, Diego P. Morales · 5 authors
Blockchain networks, given that they are not based on power-hungry proof-of-work methods, can be used in smart grid applications, in particular in the tradable green certificates use case. Thanks to the Blockchain and the smart contracts implemented, certificates can be tracked and exchanged between entities without the intervention of third parties, as well as keeping an immutable and reliable record of these certificates. This work proposes a hardware implementation of a green certificate trading system based on Blockchain, in which prosumers use hardware secure elements to implement the cryptographic tools used to interact with the Blockchain. Smart contracts help to automate these processes, deleting intermediaries, saving costs and avoiding bureaucracy.
This article details the implementation of a decentralized application (DApp) based on public blockchain Ethereum for token backed P2P electricity trading, with electric vehicle as one the peers. A hybrid market model with a peer matching mechanism with score-based peer matching orchestrated by smart contracts is used and results are presented. Solidity language is used to create smart contracts which runs on the top of open source Ethereum public blockchain. Lockable tokens are created by modifying ERC20 APIs with wallets deployed using MetaMask. Client-side programming with Node-Express with a user interface is deployed. Truffle suite-based unit testing of whole DApp is carried out and deployed to block chain. The cost analysis for deployment of DApp both the simulation environment Ganache and test network Goerli is also presented with cost allocation to different market players.
The rapid adoption of smart grids demands robust security and efficiency measures due to their critical role in delivering electricity and their potential for customer-oriented benefits. This paper presents an innovative framework, named RETINA, which provides a resilient and secure energy trading mechanism within smart grid systems. RETINA tackles the inherent security and infrastructure challenges in smart grids by establishing a trust-based security layer and facilitating energy transactions through blockchain technology. Our proposed solution integrates Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the Web of Trust (WoT) concepts, promoting decentralized communication channels and robust key management. We further introduce a smart contract-based energy trading mechanism that factors in trust, distance, and energy type (green or non-green) in cost calculation. The utility and robustness of RETINA have been validated in a virtualized testbed environment with 500 nodes, demonstrating superior performance in terms of scalability and resilience compared to the existing WoT scheme. Furthermore, RETINA successfully enables a secure and efficient energy trading scheme, promoting the use of renewable energy sources. Future enhancements will include application to a realistic smart grid deployment and the integration of additional functionalities. This groundbreaking solution has the potential to revolutionize the smart grid ecosystem, addressing its current limitations and propelling the industry towards a future of advanced and secure energy exchange.
Amanda Pleier, Patrick Dossow, Michael Hinterstocker, Philipp Thalhofer
To ensure system stability in the power grid, transmission system operators (TSO) are responsible for balancing grid frequency fluctuations by means of balancing services. In many cases, balancing service providers (BSP) aggregate several technical units for the provision of balancing energy. However, beyond the compensation process for the BSP, no monitoring process for the proper provision of required balancing energy by the TSOs exists so far. This paper presents a stepwise concept for a verification process in which the most relevant monitoring requirements of the TSOs are met. These include the exclusive participation of pre-qualified technical units in the balancing service, as well as the correct forwarding of the requested balancing energy from the BSP to its technical units and their proper provision within a tolerated range. The presented concept enables the tamper-resistant storage and retrieval of the required data for verification. In the second stage of the concept, the utilization of a Zero-Knowledge Proof additionally ensures that the verification is performed automatically and in compliance with the BSP’s trade secrets. The integration of the monitoring of individual units creates additional value since filtering for faulty units is made possible for both the TSO and the BSP. For a possible implementation of the concept, we discuss and evaluate the usage of the technologies blockchain and public key infrastructure.
With the advancement of smart devices, the operation and communication of smart grids have become increasingly efficient. Many smart devices such as smart meters, smart transformers, and smart grid controllers are already widely used in smart grids. Thus, a series of complex architectures and a series of communication modes have been formed. However, these smart devices will be exposed to various cyber attacks such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and replay attack. This is because they are open and dynamic. Therefore, there are serious security problems in the complex architectures and the communication modes. In this paper, we propose a multi-domain authentication mechanism based on blockchain cooperation to maintain the security of smart devices. In this mechanism, we propose a series of methods and algorithms, which include initialization method based on blockchain cooperative authentication, dynamic change method of intelligent devices and information, cross-domain authentication algorithm, and cross-domain key cooperative algorithm. To demonstrate the security and effectiveness of our proposed mechanism, we analysed its security and conducted a series of simulation experiments. The analysis and simulation experiments show that our proposed approach is secure and effective.
The paradigm shift from a coal-based power system to a renewable-energy-based power system brings more challenges to the supply-demand balance of the grid. Distributed energy resources (DERs), which can provide operating reserve to the grid, are regarded as a promising solution to compensate for the power fluctuation of the renewable energy resources. Small-scale DERs can be aggregated as a virtual power plant (VPP), which is eligible to bid in the operating reserve market. Since the DERs usually belong to different entities, it is important to investigate the VPP operation framework that coordinates the DERs in a trusted manner. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-assisted operating reserve framework for VPPs that aggregates various DERs. Considering the heterogeneity of various DERs, we propose a unified reserve capacity evaluation method to facilitate the aggregation of DERs. By considering the mismatch between actual available reserve capacity and the estimated value, the performance of VPP in the operating reserve market is improved. A hardware-based experimental system is developed, and numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
In recent years, the continuous increase in the number of renewable energy sources and users has led to an increase in the load on the electricity market. In this environment, the personal information data and management flexibility cannot be guaranteed in a market that integrates producers and consumers. It seems that the new energy market will face many challenges, such as how to price the output power of power plants according to different energy sources, which price that consumers can sell to other market users through self-generated electricity, how to communicate with consumers and producers in order to maintain the balance of the market and encourage consumers to reduce electricity consumption, how to calculate the market load in order to reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment. In the face of many of the above challenges, it is beneficial to introduce blockchain technology into the energy market because of the unique characteristics, which effectively reduces the cost of maintaining the market and enhances the flexibility of the market. But different market users are sensitive to market information with the advent of information transparency. Therefore, how to restrain the user behavior of the market and maintain the stability of the market will become a major problem. In this paper, we propose a market-based access control strategy to construct a blockchain framework and design an access control-based smart contract to constrain the behavior of each user. In order to further strengthen the relationship between producers and consumers, the concept of prosumer is used to enable consumers to participate in trading activities as energy producers. The experimental results are proved that the proposed solution works successfully in the blockchain, with timely responses between prosumers and consumers, good execution time and the admission of access control provides better market efficiency.
Emanuel Vieira, João Almeida, Joaquim Ferreira, Paulo Bartolomeu
Vehicular communications play a critical role in facilitating cooperative behavior among vehicles, leading to improved road safety and traffic efficiency. By sharing information such as speed, position, and trajectory, vehicles can collaborate to execute complex maneuvers like platooning, intersection crossing, and lane merging. In addition to coordinating maneuvers, vehicles can also communicate to identify critical information associated with a maneuver that needs to be saved for future analysis, particularly in case of accidents. To analyze the feasibility of such scenarios using a classical consensus algorithm, we implemented the PBFT protocol using short-range vehicular communications. Vehicles employ this protocol to agree on which maneuver data is critical, then registered securely using distributed ledger-based techniques. PBFT is combined with a maneuver coordination protocol similar to current standardization efforts by ETSI. The proposed system was tested using hardware-in-the-loop simulations using vehicles’ onboard units equipped with ITS-G5 radio communications. Performance results show the feasibility of the proposed system for sufficiently high packet delivery rates.
Emilio C. Piesciorovsky, Gary Hahn, Raymond Borges Hink, Aaron Werth · 5 authors
Electrical utilities continue to deploy more intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) inside and outside electrical substation and are associated with distributed energy resources (DERs). The integrity and confidentiality of data from IEDs is crucial, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) could improve the resilience of microgrids by helping to make these data more secure. The most popular applications using blockchain technology for electrical utilities is in the field is based on energy trading. However, the dynamism of the penetration of customer owned DERs and the deployment of sensors with IEDs have led to the identification of new applications using DLT that are focused on other areas, such as monitoring, operation and management of the grid and its assets. In addition, the majority of studies on electrical grid applications with blockchain were validated with software simulations. Although general monitoring of power systems for using DLT could be evaluated in operational electric grids, other DLT research applications such as defense against cyber-attacks and/or electrical fault detection are not likely to be performed in a real infrastructure because of possible risks to the network/equipment security. This report summarizes the application of power system applications using distributed ledger technology (DLT), providing a secure DLT framework for collecting data from IEDs like power meters and protective relays inside and outside of an electrical substation and/or between two different electrical utilities. In this study, the use case scenarios were created and assessed for different power system application by using DLT. The electrical fault detection for faulted phases (1), power quality monitoring of phase voltage magnitudes, frequency levels and load power factor (2), DERs use case monitoring (3), and cyber-event applications (4) were performed in a test bed with a Cyber-Grid Guard (CGG) system using DLT. It had a real-time simulator with power meters and protective relays in-the-loop. The first section of this report presents a literature review of power system applications using blockchain at research level. The second section shows the theory and equations used on this report. The third section shows the description of the test bed, equipment, architecture, and electrical grid diagrams. The fourth section shows the experimental models and use case scenarios that were performed for the electrical fault detection, power quality, DERs use case, and cyber event applications with the CGG system using DLT. The fifth section shows the results collected from the tests based on comparing the time stamped events of the analog signals from the IEDs, DLT computer and real time simulator. The sixth section performed the discussion of the results for the use case scenarios. Finally, section seven presents the conclusions for this report were presented.