Summary Smart grid systems are widely used across the world for providing demand response management between users and service providers. In most of the energy distributions scenarios, the traditional grid systems use the centralized architecture, which results in large transmission losses and high overheads during power generation. Moreover, owing to the presence of intruders or attackers, there may be a mismatch between demand and supply between utility centers (suppliers) and end users. Thus, there is a need for an automated energy exchange to provide secure and reliable energy trading between users and suppliers. We found, from the existing literature, that blockchain can be an effective solution to handle the aforementioned issues. Motivated by these facts, we propose a blockchain‐based smart energy trading scheme, ElectroBlocks , which provides efficient mechanisms for secure energy exchanges between users and service providers. In ElectroBlocks , nodes in the network validate the transaction using two algorithms that are cost aware and store aware. The cost‐aware algorithm locates the nearest node that can supply the energy, whereas the store‐aware algorithm ensures that the energy requests go to the node with the lowest storage space. We evaluated the performance of the ElectroBlocks using performance metrics such as mining delay, network exchanges, and storage energy. The simulation results obtained demonstrate that ElectroBlocks maintains a secure trade‐off between users and service providers when using the proposed cost‐aware and store‐aware algorithms.
Yandja Lalle, Lamia Chaari Fourati, Mohamed Fourati, João Paulo Barraca
In Smart Water Grid (SWG), smart water meters (SWMs) are installed in customers ' homes in order to provide near-real-time water consumption data. However, near-real-time data collected by SWMs can reveal the user's privacy. In this paper, we propose a user privacy protection scheme that relies on Blockchain technology and a Machine Learning algorithm called k-means++. K-means++ is used to group users into clusters and, each cluster has a private Blockchain to record its members' data. We use pseudonyms to mask users' identities and the Bloom filter is used for quick authentication. The proposed scheme is validated using simulations in python.
The synchrophasor technology has been changing the wide-area monitoring system (WAMS) of power grids; as it facilitates real-time grid situational awareness, observability and state estimation, and online stability assessment. However, the measurement samples inside the substations, or in phasor data concentrators (PDCs) can become a target for cyber-attacks, such as false data injection and data tampering attacks. Moreover, the synchrophasors are vulnerable to a single point of failure. Blockchain, the main technology behind the bitcoin, can simultaneously ensure reliability, security, and integrity with decentralization properties in a peer-to-peer system. Therefore, to mitigate the issues in the synchrophasor network, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based synchrophasor network protection framework to enhance the self-defensive capability of its monitoring system. Our proposed model can mitigate data manipulation attacks from malicious entities by introducing bloom filter based fast phasor data identity validation, and Merkle tree-based fast data verification. Finally, the blockchain consensus can help to keep the consistency in the system and eliminate malicious entities from manipulating the overall security of the protection framework. Our experimental results show that the proposed system is scalable and fast in terms of synchrophasor data verification.
The future of energy systems is currently driven by three key trends: electrification, decarbonization, and digitalization. A growing share of renewable generation is without doubt part of the solution to accommodate the increasing electricity demand with a low-carbon emission constraint. The question addressed in this review paper is to what extent digitalization will enable the decentralization of renewable energy generation close to the point of consumption. Digital technologies, namely, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Distributed Ledgers, will have a positive impact on renewable Distributed Energy Resources adoption by contributing to achieve a better balance between supply and demand at the edge of the grid and by improving the hosting capacity of distribution networks. However, decentralized energy production is still limited by structural factors (e.g., low power density of renewable resources, economies of scale in renewable generation and storage), regulatory factors (e.g., access to the grid, pricing policy), and digital technology constraints (e.g., limited number of transaction per second). As a result, the likely scenario of development is a reasonable mix between decentralized and (also digital enabled) centralized renewable-based energy generation interconnected together with an engaged customer and highly developed and smarter distribution and transmission networks.
A smart grid (SG) system offers many services to the end-users, such as load management, load forecasting, and energy trading (ET). As data among different devices in SG environment flows through an open channel, i.e., Internet, so, security and privacy always remains a challenging issue. Though many solutions exist for this problem in literature but these solutions are not adequate to handle security, privacy, latency, real-time settlement of ET. Moreover, most of the solutions reported in the literature are based upon the centralized architecture having single point of failure. Motivated from these facts, this paper proposes a scheme ET-DeaL, which is a Smart Contract-based Secure Energy Trading scheme for SG system for peer-to-peer (P2P) ET. ET-DeaL uses Ethereum smart contract (ESC) and Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) for the P2P ET management. Moreover, it manages the energy load of residential houses, industries, and electric vehicles (EVs). In ET-DeaL, security and privacy issues have been resolved using ESC, while storage cost issues are handled with IPFS protocol. We implemented a real time ESC and deploy it in Truffle suite. The security bugs of the ET-DeaL are tested on MyThril open-source tool. Finally, ET-DeaL performance evaluation demonstrates its effectiveness as compared to the traditional systems where it outperforms the existing schemes with respect to various performance evaluation metrics.
The security problems of smart contracts have drawn extensive attention due to the enormous financial losses caused by vulnerabilities. Existing methods on smart contract vulnerability detection heavily rely on fixed expert rules, leading to low detection accuracy. In this paper, we explore using graph neural networks (GNNs) for smart contract vulnerability detection. Particularly, we construct a contract graph to represent both syntactic and semantic structures of a smart contract function. To highlight the major nodes, we design an elimination phase to normalize the graph. Then, we propose a degree-free graph convolutional neural network (DR-GCN) and a novel temporal message propagation network (TMP) to learn from the normalized graphs for vulnerability detection. Extensive experiments show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in detecting three different types of vulnerabilities.
Carlos Barreto, Taha Eghtesad, Scott Eisele, Áron Lászka · 6 authors
Power grids are undergoing major changes due to the rapid adoption of intermittent renewable energy resources and the increased availability of energy storage devices. These trends drive smart-grid operators to envision a future where peer-to-peer energy trading occurs within microgrids, leading to the development of Transactive Energy Systems. Blockchains have garnered significant interest from both academia and industry for their potential application in decentralized TES, in large part due to their high level of resilience. In this paper, we introduce a novel class of attacks against blockchain based TES, which target the gateways that connect market participants to the system. We introduce a general model of blockchain based TES and study multiple threat models and attack strategies. We also demonstrate the impact of these attacks using a testbed based on GridLAB-D and a private Ethereum network. Finally, we study how to mitigate these attack.
Industry 4.0 technological expansion and the multiple accesses to the diverse Smart Grid domains (power networks, control systems, market, customer premises) entail the need to provide efficient interconnection mechanisms with connection from anywhere, at any time and in anyhow. However, this type of requirement should not only consist in imposing interoperability solutions between entities and domains, but also in searching the way to justify and trace connections (how, when, where, who) for future governance or auditing actions. This paper, therefore, presents a three layer-based interconnection architecture and several interconnection strategies, all of them adapting the traditional policy decision and enforcement approaches together with the blockchain technology to manage reliable and secure connections among entities, processes and critical resources. With this architecture in mind, the paper also analyzes the coupling level of the blockchain technology, and explores which interconnection strategy is more suitable for Smart Grid domains and their control systems.
Gomanth Bere, Justin J. Ochoa, Taesic Kim, Indrasena R. Aenugu
Blockchain technology has many beneficial properties that can advance electric vehicles in cyber-physical environments, especially for security-related purposes for EV battery management systems (BMSs). This paper explores firmware security vulnerabilities of a current BMS through reverse engineering and how the blockchain technology can be applied toward a next-generation BMS by managing critical activities and tasks including BMS firmware security check, recovery, and patch generation. A breakthrough method for blockchain-based automated detection of the firmware vulnerabilities and a patch generation is implemented in Internet-of-Thing (IoT) security modules as nodes of a blockchain network and validated by experiments. The proposed methods transformative to other cyber-physical system applications.
Jun 1, 2020·2020 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2020 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe)
Electricity systems around the world are currently undergoing fundamental changes on two fronts, decarbonization and digitalization. The transition towards a low carbon economy means increased penetration and utilization of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and the electrification of transport and other sectors. The expansion of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), electricity grid storage, Electric Vehicles (EV's), the associated charging infrastructure, smart buildings and the upgraded ICT infrastructure, also provides opportunities for end-customers to play a more active role in the electricity markets. Blockchain technology can help avail these opportunities through innovative business models which are not just centered around the end-users but also in improving the overall market operation. Blockchain is a forward-looking technology that can significantly disrupt the way in which the electricity markets and its participants operate. The consensus based decision making, decentralized and distributed characteristics of blockchain technology render it well suited for a future energy system which is increasingly decentralized, distributed and with more active end-customers participating in the market. In this paper, we discuss in brief the blockchain technology outlook and its suitability for the future energy grid and market operation. We will also discuss how blockchain can help disrupt the energy sector and the associated challenges. Finally, we also provide our recommendation on what applications of blockchain in the energy sector we predict the biggest potential.
Rabiya Khalid, Nadeem Javaid, Sakeena Javaid, Muhammad Ali Imran · 5 authors
Local energy generation and peer to peer (P2P) energy trading in the local market can reduce energy consumption cost, emission of harmful gases (as renewable energy sources (RESs) are used to generate energy at user's premises) and increase smart grid resilience. In this paper, to implement a hybrid P2P energy trading market, a blockchain-based solution is proposed. A blockchain-based system is fully decentralized and it allows the market members to interact with each other and trade energy without involving any third party. Smart contracts play a very important role in the blockchain-based energy trading market. They contain all the necessary rules for energy trading. We have proposed three smart contracts to implement the hybrid electricity trading market. The market members interact with main smart contract which requests P2P smart contract and prosumer to grid (P2G) smart contract for further processing. The main objectives of this paper are to propose a model to implement an efficient hybrid energy trading market while reducing cost and peak to average ratio (PAR) of electricity.
The integration of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-based technologies with the existing industrial manufacturing processes help to improve on-site safety of workers, reduce downtime of machines, improve productivity rate, and minimize near-miss incidents and casualties. However, a prior intimation of the various safety-related information may minimize the probability of accidents on the factory floor and casualty rates. Typically, the safety-as-a-service (Safe-aaS) infrastructure provides customized safety-related decisions to the registered end-users. However, there exist certain problems associated with the privacy of the information provided by the end-users during registration, decision parameters requested by the end-users, and data sensed by the sensor nodes. In this work, we provide an architecture of Blockchain integration into the Safe-aaS infrastructure. Additionally, we discuss the implementation and management of the Blockchain-enabled Safe-aaS architecture. Extensive analytical results demonstrate that the profit of the safety service provider (SSP) improves with the adoption of blockchain technology into the Safe-aaS architecture. On the other hand, the overall throughput in our proposed architecture follows an increasing trend, with the increase in the number of decisions successfully delivered. Additionally, the throughput decreases with the increase in the number of registered end-users.
Zakaria Abou El Houda, Abdelhakim Hafid, Lyes Khoukhi
Smart grids (SGs) and advanced metering infrastructures (AMIs) are considered as the new evolution of classical electrical grids. The recent emergence of smart meters is paving the way for the proliferation of smart grids, where billions of smart meters are interconnected to provide novel pervasive services (e.g., real time pricing application and real time energy consumption), and automate diagnostic and daily energy metering (i.e., gas, electric) tasks (e.g., billing, monitoring, planning and predicting of energy usage). The recent explosion in the number of insecure smart meters is changing the view towards SG from enabler of smart homes into a powerful amplifying tool that creates new vectors for cyberattacks (i.e., smart-homes Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks) at large scale. This motivated us to design a new flexible, secure, efficient and trustworthy access control scheme based on blockchain and smart contract. Although access control exists in AMI, it is based on a centralized model (i.e., router/gateway, firewall) which introduces a bottleneck (i.e., single point of failure) and causes the collapse of the system. In this paper, we propose a new decentralized-based access control architecture for SG based on blockchain; it uses smart contracts (i.e., Ethereum's smart contracts) in order to manage permissions in a fully distributed and trustworthy manner. The architecture is implemented, tested and deployed on the Ethereum official test network Ropsten [1]. The results confirm that the proposed blockchain based access control scheme achieves security, flexibility, efficiency, and cost effectiveness making it a promising solution to mitigate DDoS attacks in SGs.
Future Smart Grids will need to integrate thousands of independently operated intelligent energy devices into one organizational unit. Distributed ledger technologies can provide the means for a business-driven consensus between supply and demand of electrical power. This approach is limited by the computing power of the participating devices. We describe a way to increase the scalability of this approach by a) aggregating power consumption and generation, thus reducing the computational load on the blockchain and by b) applying the concept of edge computing to increase reliability and reaction time. We propose a hierarchical clustering approach for smart grid power balancing, which aims to advance our understanding of architectures for future real-world smart grids.
Smart grids are being continually adopted as a replacement of the traditional power grid systems to ensure safe, efficient, and cost-effective power distribution. The smart grid is a heterogeneous communication network made up of various devices such as smart meters, automation, and emerging technologies interacting with each other. As a result, the smart grid inherits most of the security vulnerabilities of cyber systems, putting the smart grid at risk of cyber-attacks. To secure the communication between smart grid entities, namely the smart meters and the utility, we propose in this paper a communication infrastructure built on top of a blockchain network, specifically Ethereum. All two-way communication between the smart meters and the utility is assumed to be transactions governed by smart contracts. Smart contracts are designed in such a way to ensure that each smart meter is authentic and each smart meter reading is reported securely and privately. We present a simulation of a sample smart grid and report all the costs incurred from building such a grid. The simulations illustrate the feasibility and security of the proposed architecture. They also point to weaknesses that must be addressed, such as scalability and cost.
Dayadi Lakshmaiah, L. Koteswara Rao, R. Yadgiri Rao, I. Satya Narayana · 5 authors
Data security for IOT devices is very import aspect these days as the world is moving towards digitalization. Consider a smart energy meter which provides a way to monitor the energy consumption at home, data security in such smart meter reading is very important. If the Power reading signals are tampered, then it may cause serious economic loss for the authorities. The personal information infringement of user can occur at the database and may fall in the hands of unethical persons. In order to address these issues in this paper we propose to use a permissioned blockchain network. Blockchain maintains time stamped ledger records that are very hard to tamper. Every transaction is recorded and distributed across many participant nodes, these records are immutable because they have blocks of data which are linked to each other with strong cryptographic hash. The blockchain network is built using hyperledger fabric, where all the participant nodes are registered and only registered nodes involve in consensus process of transaction. In fabric, MSP (membership service provider) identifies the identity of the participant nodes through X.509 digital certificates issued by certificate authority. Along with creation of blockchain network for the application, a mobile client, a web client, an Arduino client and web server is created. The Arduino client is the hardware module that has an energy meter (SDM120) measuring the energy consumption of the user and sends this information serially to NODEMCU. NODEMCU POSTs the read energy details to the web server at particular api, web server POSTs the details to the Blockchain Network, where transactions undergoes consensus to add this information to blockchain ledger. Now data is decentralized and every peer node has the local copy of ledger. The updated information can be queried and seen on the web Client and Mobile client user interfaces. Anonymity-enhanced blockchain has been implemented to avoid the disclosure of personal information or data. Also performance analysis of the application is carried out for number of sequential requests and concurrent requests from many users using different tools.
Blockchain is an immutable type of distributed ledger that is capable of storing data without relying on a third party. Blockchain technology has attracted significant interest in research areas, including its application in the smart grid for cybersecurity. Although significant efforts have been devoted to utilizing blockchain in the smart grid for cybersecurity, there is a lack of comprehensive survey on blockchain in the smart grid for cybersecurity in both application and technological perspectives. To fill this gap, we conducted a comprehensive survey on blockchain for smart gird cybersecurity. This conducted survey presents the latest insights of ideas, architectures, and techniques of implementation that are relevant to blockchain's application in the smart grid for cybersecurity. This article aims at providing helpful guidance and reference for future research efforts specific to blockchain for cybersecurity in the smart grid.
Energy systems around the globe nowadays are undergoing a rapid transformation in their conventional structures that are vital from an environmental, economic, and social perspective. The driving forces behind the shift to the new era of the energy, also known as Energy 4.0, are the so-called 3 D’s: Decarbonization, Digitalization, and Decentralization. \n \nThe blockchain technology, which comes as a result of digitalization, is considered by many experts a transformative force for the energy sector. More specifically, it is believed that it can be a direct driver for the decentralization of energy systems as well as an indirect one for their decarbonization and further digitalization. This is due to the technology’s most prominent technical capacities, namely, transparency, security, and decentralization. All these combined have provided practical use cases, with the most widely-known being peer-to-peer power trading. On this occasion, consumers are enabled to trade the surplus amount of the energy they produce (e.g. with photovoltaics) with other consumers in decentralized energy networks. Such a solution can contribute to the decentralization of energy systems and make them more democratic and inclusive. \n \nMost of the blockchain applications in the energy sector today have been directed towards the electric power industry, with more than half of blockchain use cases focusing on decentralized energy trading and energy projects financing. In contrast, the application of blockchain in the petroleum industry is still in its infancy. In the oil and gas sector, new technologies have to pass through several phases before mass adoption occurs, due to high costs and increased probability of component failures. Another deterrent is the particular nature of operations in the industry. For instance, oil is traded as a commodity on a global level and is impacted by external factors such as geopolitics, while electricity is specific to a regional level. Despite the sluggish adaptability of the industry, more recently, a number of blockchain initiatives from oil and gas majors have been launched. \n \nRegardless of those advances and the fact that there is a growing number of startup companies developing similar solutions, blockchain is still in an exploratory phase of development. That is the main reason for it not being widely adopted by large industry players or in large-scale applications, which could otherwise help it grow faster and be established as a standard technology for particular applications. It will only become apparent in the next five to ten years, at a time when blockchain is expected to reach maturity from a technical standpoint, whether it will be a revolutionary technology that will bring about a revolution in the structure and processes of the energy industry. \n \nThis thesis aims at reviewing the main characteristics of blockchain technology, and based on its technical advantages, analyze the role it has played up to this day in the transformation of the energy industry and, more specifically, in the electric power and oil & gas sectors. In addition, a case study is presented that aims at showing how blockchain can provide solutions for the Greek energy ecosystem.
USDOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), Mariola Rodríguez, Peter L. Fuhr, Gary Hahn · 6 authors
This paper provides descriptions of the key components of different distributed ledger technology platforms.Distributed ledger technology (DLT) allows for distribution of databases among different organizations and devices.The platforms use cryptographically linked "blocks" to store and verify transactional information between these organizations.DLT increases data security, data integrity, trust among its participants.Different organizations are looking to deploy this distributed and decentralized approach to avoid the single-point-of-failure vulnerabilities associated with centralized data repositories.In this study we examine twelve different DLT platforms.There is agreement within the community that of all the platforms considered here, Hyperledger and Ethereum are the most mature when it comes to privacy and permissions.These DLT platforms are being used for applications such as transactive energy, health care, and the food and goods supply chain.However, further development is required to realize the full promise of DLT.Our assessment includes a general description of each DLT and its key characteristics.Such characteristics include consensus protocol and cryptography used, public vs. private, and permissioned or permissionless.The selection and implementation of a DLT architecture depends heavily on the use case and performance requirements.During this research we found key parameters to measure performance and existing tools for assessment.Four different parameters were identified 1) consensus, 2) throughput, 3) latency, and 4) scalability.The architectures of Hyperledger Caliper and Blockbench are described as different performance assessment frameworks.From this preliminary study it is evident that there are dissimilarities on the performance assessments methods developers and users are characterizing DLT architectures.The purpose of this paper is to identify key parameters to test performance, tools that are being used and provide information on results from previous studies.
Contract-for-Difference financial instruments are available to renewable electricity generators in day-ahead electricity markets to allow them to hedge against revenue risk. Traditional CfDs while designed to hedge revenue risk, introduce other new risks such as counterparty credit, margining and third-party risks. We therefore propose a novel financial instrument - an Ethereum blockchain-based dual escrow smart contract, to serve as the mediator in a CfD agreement between a renewable electricity generator and supplier. This financial instrument addresses hedging related risks that result from traditional CfD agreements in day-ahead electricity markets. In this paper, we design the logic of the financial instrument, translate this logic to smart contract codes and demonstrate its expected performance. Overall, the proposed financial instrument has the benefits of reducing hedging related risks inherent in traditional CfDs. Likewise, it enables secure, efficient, cost-effective, consistent, reliable, transparent and frictionless transactions between contracting parties in a CfD agreement.
Muhammad Asaad Cheema, Hassaan Khaliq Qureshi, Chrysostomos Chrysostomou, Marios Lestas
In this paper, we present a distributed machine learning based intrusion detection system in Internet of Things (IoT) utilizing Blockchain technology. In particular, spectral partitioning is proposed to divide the IoT network into autonomous systems (AS) enabling traffic monitoring for intrusion detection (ID) to be performed by the selected AS border area nodes in a distributed manner. The ID system is based on machine learning, where a support-vector machine algorithm is trained using prominent IoT data sets and detection of the attackers is provided. Furthermore, the integrity of the attackers' list is offered by utilizing Blockchain technology, which enables a distributed sharing of the attackers' information among the AS border area nodes of the Blockchain network. Simulations are performed to evaluate different aspects of the proposed IoT system and demonstrate the potential of integrating machine learning based ID to a distributed spectral partitioned Blockchain network.
Jacob Eberhardt, Marco Peise, Dong-Ha Kim, Stefan Tai
The production of renewable energies by individual households typically is small-scale and not profitable without public subsidies, yet a critical factor in preventing further global warming. Unlike market-based peer-to-peer trading solutions, which require households to engage in costly peer-to-peer trading activities, we propose a community-based approach where households in a local distribution grid share the energy they produce in a netting process to maximize internal consumption. The technical instantiation of this idea in real-world energy grids comes with several challenges. Households within a community do not necessarily trust each other or electric utilities. Furthermore, energy consumption data is highly sensitive and must be protected. Further idiosyncrasies of national energy markets, regulatory frameworks, and current grid infrastructure exist. Addressing all these challenges, we propose a blockchain-based system that leverages zero-knowledge off-chain computations to facilitate automated energy sharing within a community in a trustless and privacy-preserving way. We provide a proof- of-concept implementation using the ZoKrates framework for verifiable off-chain computations and the Ethereum Blockchain. To support our claims, we provide evaluation results obtained in the context of a major German national research project on blockchain-based energy networks.