The power grid is a critical infrastructure of a country that needs protection and security. According to the report of the International Energy Agency, the electricity demand is constantly increasing the world over. Countries are moving towards green energy and efforts are being made to integrate these green energy into the main grid. Smart Grid will improve the reliability and efficiency of the grid by managing the energy demand. Cyber-attacks and cyber terrorism is also increasingly targeting the electrical grid. Intruders may try to gain access to the grid by exploiting the vulnerability of the grid. IEDs/devices are the endpoints of the network and they are the weakest link in the entire network. Endpoints must be protected by providing better identification and authentication. Blockchain uses a cryptographic hash function and digital signature to identify a device in a network that is arranged as a chain of the blocks. This research illustrates the methodology to be adopted for implementing Blockchain in Smart Grid for device identification and authentication. Implementation of blockchain was done on an experimental basis and satisfactory results are obtained. The security of the grid will be greatly enhanced with blockchain-based implementation.
Chenxi Jia, Hongyuan Ding, Chuanjin Zhang, Xi Zhang
In modern buildings, the intelligent building energy management system (IBEMS) faces several problems with its centralized architecture: the difficulty in the networking between end devices, the lack of flexibility, and the limited sharing of underlying information. To overcome these problems, this paper probes into the framework of the wireless sensor network (WSN), and designed a network model of the IBEMS. Next, the security of blockchain technology was fully examined, and a dynamic key management strategy was proposed based on the blockchain for the IBEMS. The feasibility of the proposed plan was verified through experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed plan reduces the data storage time and space of each sensor, and optimizes the control of the IBEMS. The research results provide a reference for setting up a safe and reliable IBEMS based on spatial distribution, and help promote blockchain technology in other scenarios of the UPIoT.
Ashot Mnatsakanyan, Hamad Albeshr, Ali Al Marzooqi, Endika Bilbao
The penetration of distributed energy resources keeps increasing in most of electricity markets, becoming an essential part of smart grid systems. This, along with advancements in power converters and control systems, led to formation of various aggregation mechanisms, such as Virtual Power Plants (VPP) or demand response (DR) aggregators, enabling participation of small and medium scale distributed energy resources (DER) in electricity markets. Such mechanisms typically entail control of DER assets at specified time periods to provide grid services such as peak shaving. However, the transparency of operations when controlling the aggregated DERs is a risk from the asset owner's perspective and may lead to various types of disputes with the aggregator or operator. In order to tackle this issue, we have developed a blockchain-based mechanism that handles all transactions within a VPP on a distributed data ledger, enabling full transparency of the system. The blockchain system is integrated with an actual VPP setup with a total aggregated size of 1.8MWs composed of renewables, energy storage systems and controllable loads. The proposed mechanism contributes to grid digitalization and enables new applications in power systems, incentivizing larger penetration of DERs and their participation in ancillary services.
Technological advancements are leading to new frontiers in power grid operation, monitoring, control, and commercialization. The conventional notion of unidirectional power flow from centralized generating stations to probable consumers through unidirectional distribution systems is now changing with the active participation of consumers as prosumers and distributed energy resources. In order to maintain security, privacy and avoid double-spending while performing energy trading through online mechanisms a strong and reliable mode of energy transaction platform is required. Blockchain technology has proven as a stable and reliable platform for maintaining the distributed ledger that could be utilized for hosting and managing the energy transactions of the grid. In this paper, a blockchain-based energy trading mechanism in presence of internet of things has been proposed and the impact of employing blockchain technology on the aggregated load profile and available distribution capability of the ADN has been performed in Modified IEEE 123 bus distribution feeder.
Under the broader aegis of smart grid, the use of Distributed Ledger Technology to promote privacy, trust and security in peer-to-peer (P2P) energy sharing is gaining attention globally. However, implementation is limited to microgrid or neighbourhood level due to the challenges of scalability and performance associated with increase in number of prosumers. Therefore, the inclusion of stakeholders- producers to prosumers-require a scalable solution for advancing the information and energy exchange objectives. To this end, we propose CEnTrA, an application of sharding in blockchain to develop a novel hierarchical model capable of processing P2P energy sharing transactions at city-scale. CEnTrA is based on ChainSpace and takes advantage of the structure of the electrical grid to create a scalable network. The hierarchical model allows the use of customized transaction policies at different levels and locations of the grid. The results show that sharding increases transaction throughput by upto 59.52% in comparison to no sharding. Additionally, a location-based sharding model is presented that improves performance of multi-input transactions by 39.57% for 250 inputs in comparison to random sharding.
In today’s modern energy sector, driven more and more towards decentralization, which includes many smaller energy producers rather than huge government projects, security against cyber-attacks is becoming more crucial for the energy grid. Since many small energy plants do not have the resources to finance very expensive existing cyber-security systems, they often have no security system in place at all. Although with small energy producers, the risks of being under attack are not as devastating as in a huge power plants, they still pose a serious threat to the energy system and to the supply of electricity to whole regions. Moreover, in the era of technology, such cyber-attacks could be carried out simultaneously at many locations, thus risking the lack of electricity to larger areas. Since there was a clearly identified need for such an instrument, the SPEAR consortium, started to develop tailor made solution for different types of actors in the energy sector, to prevent such occurrences and help secure the energy system. One of the use cases, investigated in the project, is a real operating hydro power plant in the mountain area of Bulgaria called Leshnitsa, which will be one of the four sites to first test the functionality of the finished product. The plant had no previous cyber-security system in place and had already experienced one attack, where one of the computers in the plant was hacked and a ransom was demanded from the attackers to unlock it. Exactly events like this one are proof, that the energy sector has a need to protect the growing number of small independent actors in the energy system..
The trade of electricity on the free market is realized through energy exchanges. This article describes the Electricity Trading Web Platform, which stores information about Ethereum Blockchain transactions and the rest of the information in a relational database.
João Mello, José Villar, Ricardo J. Bessa, Mário Lopes · 6 authors
This paper proposes a Local Energy Market using a P2P blockchain-powered marketplace where agents bilaterally trade energy after the consumption and production period, and not before, as usual in electricity market design. The EU and MIBEL regulatory framework for Renewable Energy Communities potentially creates space for such a market, but some improvements in the settlement procedures and agent’s participation must be met.
Scott Eisele, Carlos Barreto, Abhishek Dubey, Xenofon Koutsoukos · 7 authors
The emergence of blockchains and smart contracts has renewed interest in electrical cyberphysical systems, especially transactive energy systems. To address the associated challenges, we present TRANSAX, a blockchain-based transactive energy system that provides an efficient, safe, and privacy-preserving market built on smart contracts.
Smart Grids and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) are neither a dream nor a near-future thing anymore, rather it is happening now. The integration of more and more embedded systems and IoT devices is pushing smart grids and I4.0 forward at a breakneck speed. To cope up with this, the modification of age-old SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems in terms of decentralization, near-real-time operation, security, and privacy is necessary. In this context, blockchain technology has the potential of providing not only these essential features of the data acquisition process of future SCADA systems but also many other useful add-ons. On the other side, it is evident that various type of security breach tends to take place more during any economic turmoil. These can cause even more serious devastation to the global economy and human life. Thus, it is necessary to make our industries robust, automated, and resilient with secured and immutable data acquiring systems. This paper deals with the implementation scopes of blockchain in the data acquisition part of SCADA systems in the area of the smart grid and I4.0. There are several consensus mechanisms to support blockchain integration in the field of cryptocurrencies, vehicular networks, healthcare systems, e-commerce, etc. But little attention has been paid to developing efficient and easy-to-implement consensus mechanisms in the field of blockchain-enabled SCADA systems. From this perspective, a novel consensus mechanism, which we call PoRCH (Proof of Random Count in Hashes), with a customized mining node selection scheme has been proposed in this paper. Also, a small-scale prototype of a blockchain-enabled data acquisition system has been developed. The performance evaluation of the implemented prototype shows the benefits of blockchain technology.
Blockchains help to build trust among a decentralized network of unknown and untrusted peers who need to agree on a common protocol and trust the correctness and compatibility of the corresponding software implementations. The software engineering discipline cannot ignore this trend, as it fundamentally affects the way software is designed, developed, deployed, and delivered.1 As with the emergence of the Internet, software smart contracts for solving new classes of real-world problems, as opposed to introducing blockchains everywhere, where they may be unnecessary, or provide an inefficient and environmentally unsound solution.4
Voltage controls the majority of the processes around us, starting from lighting an incandescent lamp to running huge machines in industries. Therefore, voltage monitoring becomes essential, which demands efficient measurement and storage of voltage data. However, there is hardly any system till date that fulfils both the goals of voltage monitoring and voltage data storage. To achieve this goal, we propose the application of the Internet of Things along with the server-based framework and Distributed Ledger Technology to build systems for smart voltage monitoring. Two models - a centralised model and a decentralised model have been presented and analysed thoroughly in this paper. The centralised model is built on client-server architecture, whereas the decentralised model is based on a peer-to-peer architecture. Blockchain and InterPlanetary File System have been used for the implementation of the decentralised system. Potential improvements to make these systems robust have also been discussed. The methods proposed in this paper for voltage monitoring are novel; ensure efficient data storage and can be used for IoT data storage of any form.
Increasing demand for electricity necessitates the use of efficient mechanisms for demand response management (DRM) in the existing smart grid (SG) system. In the Industry 4.0 era, the usage of information and communication technologies in the energy industry revolutionized the existing grid called SG, which provides a bi-directional flow of energy and data. To handle the energy demand of the consumers, DRM is crucial. It provides the active participation of consumers in the energy trading system (ETS) between consumers and service providers. The traditional energy trading system (TETS) relies on the centralized system or trusted third parties, which may act as a single point of failure. So, it is essential to equip the SG system with a secure energy trading system (SETS) to provide privacy and security to the consumer's data. In this direction, one of the emerging technology, called blockchain, can handle the issue as mentioned above, which is a chain of decentralized and distributed transaction ledger that is retained and maintained by each user. It performs peerto- peer (P2P) energy transactions among different consumers, such as individual houses, using smart contracts, and without a central control body. In a decentralized system, each consumer has its energy storage locally generated using renewable energy resources (RES). In this article, SETS, a blockchain-based decentralized ETS framework, is proposed for storing and processing the data generated from smart meters (SMs). In SETS, miner node is designated to validate the requests of energy requirements, dynamic pricing, and time of stay. Then, an energy transaction execution approach is designed for SETS. The evaluation results obtained show that SETS outperforms the TETS in terms of computation time and communication costs.
As a future energy system, the smart grid is designed to improve the efficiency of traditional power systems while providing more stable and reliable services. However, this efficient and reliable service relies on collecting and analyzing users’ electricity consumption data frequently, which induces various security and privacy threats. To address these challenges, we propose a double-blockchain assisted secure and anonymous data aggregation scheme for fog-enabled smart grid named DA-SADA. Specifically, we design a three-tier architecture-based data aggregation framework by integrating fog computing and the blockchain, which provides strong support for achieving efficient and secure data collection in smart grids. Subsequently, we develop a secure and anonymous data aggregation mechanism with low computational overhead by jointly leveraging the Paillier encryption, batch aggregation signature and anonymous authentication. In particular, the system achieves fine-grained data aggregation and provides effective support for power dispatching and price adjustment by the designed double-blockchain and two-level data aggregation. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme is illustrated by a series of security and computation cost analyses.
Yuanrui Sang, Ümit Cali, Murat Kuzlu, Manisa Pipattanasomporn · 6 authors
Blockchain is an emerging technology that can be applied to many industries involving transactions. It is a fair, transparent and secure way to settle and record transactions between multiple parties without the involvement of a third party. In recent years, many blockchain applications in the field of energy have emerged, however, there is still no guideline or standard for blockchain applications in energy yet. In order to fill the gap, the paper aims to provide a brief review of grid and prosumer blockchain applications and present the standard development activities by the IEEE Standard Association (SA). The review shows that blockchain in energy is a maturing technology that can be used in many areas in the power and energy industry, facilitating the growth of different modern grid technologies. With the development of standards, guidelines for blockchain applications in energy will be provided so that this technology will be better utilized.
Abubakar Sadiq Sani, Dong Yuan, Ke Meng, Zhao Yang Dong
As supply chain attacks such as forged certificates and modified software updates to smart grid remain a major challenge, blockchain has emerged as an attractive solution for enabling supply chain security due to its transparent, immutability, and decentralisation characteristics. These attacks, which focus on compromising smart grid components and services, can have a cascading effect on smart grid operations. A large number of interdependencies between the components and services and reliance on trusted third parties hinders the ability to safely and securely identify and authenticate the components and services. We propose Idenx, a blockchain-based identity management system for mitigating supply chain attacks. Idenx uses the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) to construct the identity of every component or service and further uses a Secure Pseudo-Random Function (PRF) with the identity to derive an attribute identifier for the component or service. Our approach for identifying and authenticating a component is based on Idenx smart contracts that facilitate supply chain security agreements without trusted third parties. We presented the security analysis of Idenx and the results show that it is resilient to supply chain attacks. Furthermore, we implemented a prototype of Idenx on Ethereum blockchain and evaluated it with respect to two real-world smart grid supply chain attacks.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Future smart grids are expected to be equipped with a multitude of distributed and connected devices, able to measure, manage and control the state of the grid. In this view, the presence of distributed devices, with spare computational capabilities, allows the development of Distributed Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, aiming at performing the analyses and optimizations needed to ensure the correct grid operation. This work aims to present a new Decentralized Genetic Algorithm (DGA) approach able to perform, form a global perspective, the optimization of the network operation, showing resilience to malfunctioning and cyber-attacks to the distributed Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This result has been achieved by implementing an immutable, certified and decentralized blockchain based master ledger, which serves as the coordinating node among all the distributed computing devices. The proposed methodology has been tested considering an optimal scheduling problem in a local MV network, with high penetration of Distributed Renewable Generation and Controllable Loads.
Abstract The energy system is evolving from smart grid to energy Internet. Virtual power plant (VPP), as an important part of the energy Internet, plays an important role in the distributed energy generation and trading. In this article, a blockchain‐based VPP transaction model is established for the future energy Internet driven by real‐time electricity price. Then the smart contracts for distributed energy trading in VPPs using blockchain technology are proposed, and the key technological difficulties are analyzed and the solutions are given. Experiments show that the proposed model can reflect the supply and demand information in real time, so that two‐way selection can be carried out under the condition of information symmetry when distributed energy is connected to the grid. If our method is applied, we can help distributed energy suppliers set electricity prices, reduce the trust cost and improve the energy trading efficiency. Also, we can help the distributed energy voluntarily participate in VPPs and joint maintain the system, then solve the problem of VPP's coordinated control and scheduling of distributed energy resources.
Energy trading systems have revolutionized by taking advantage of energy users who produce surplusenergy. In the cyberphysical energy sharing systems, the participation of such consumers who can also sell their residuum energy for profit, namely prosumers, is critical for the sustainable and efficient energy sharing procedure and requires improved prosumer management. The idea of grouping the prosumers for better profits is a promising approach for prosumer management which is currently carried out in centralized manner; that face trust, security and scalability issues. Hence, a strong tool that can protect the prosumer privacy; log the changes for audit purposes and eventually improve the performance of the system is necessary. This paper proposes a blockchain-assisted approach using smart contracts for improved scalability and decentralization of the prosumer grouping mechanism in the context of P2P energy trading. The results show around 38.7% improvement in the performance and scalability of the system.
Mahdi Alkaeed, Md Mohiuddin Soliman, Khaled M. Khan, Tarek Elfouly
In this century, the demand for energy is increasing daily, and the need for energy resources has become urgent and inevitable. New ways of generating energy, such as renewable resources that depend on many sources, including the sun and wind energy will contribute to the future of humankind largely and effectively. These renewable sources are facing major challenges that cannot be ignored which also require more researches on appropriate solutions . This has led to the emergence of a new type of network user called prosumer, which causes new challenges such as the intermittent nature of renewable. Smart grids have emerged as a solution to integrate these distributed energy sources. It also provides a mechanism to maintain safety and security for power supply networks. The main idea of smart grids is to facilitate local production and consumption By customers and consumers.Distributed ledger technology (DLT) or Block-chain technology has evolved dramatically since 2008 that coincided with the birth of its first application Bitcoin, which is the first cryptocurrency. This innovation led to sparked in the digital revolution, which provides decentralization, security, and democratization of information storage and transfer systems across numerous sectors/industries. Block-chain can be applied for the sake of the durability and safety of energy systems. In this paper, we will propose a new distributed framework that provides protection based on block-chain technology for energy systems to enhance self-defense capability against those cyber-attacks.
Anish Jindal, Jakob Kronawitter, Ramona Kühn, Martin Bor · 10 authors
Abstract With the increased penetration of distributed renewable energy sources (DRES) in the grid, new pathways are required to keep the electricity distribution system stable. The provision of ancillary services (AS) by the DRES can contribute in this regard. However, it is necessary to communicate the need for AS from the third party providers such as distribution system operator (DSO) to the DRES in an efficient and scalable manner. To this end, a flexible information and communication technology (ICT) architecture is presented in this paper, and the requirements for the architecture are elaborated. We argue that this architecture is capable of supporting the present and future needs of electricity distribution networks. To illustrate its utility and effectiveness, an accounting use case for DSOs has been presented; it describes a remuneration scheme for the AS provision. A dashboard has been developed to enable communication via this architecture and to allow control of the grid. In addition, a distributed ledger technology for the realization of accounting has been analysed with respect to its scalability and performance capabilities.