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.
Energy Internet provides important support to power transmission and substation distribution links, security is particularly significant. However, access authentication centralized to the certification center has brought great pressure on computing and communications. In this paper, a distributed authentication scheme for the energy Internet is proposed based on the blockchain technology, which is decentralized and undeniable. A PBFT consensus mechanism is implemented with the Shamir threshold secret sharing mechanism. Experiments show that the scheme can effectively improve the concurrent access efficiency of Energy Internet terminals.
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.
The robustness of modern power systems depends on the level of cyber security against cyber-attacks. Since energy transactions could significantly affect the power system operation, these transactions should be evaluated through a secure system to enhance the power system reliability. In this paper, a blockchain-based energy transaction framework is introduced and the level of security for different energy transaction frameworks are evaluated by calculating the overall probability of successful attacks (PSA)to each one. PSA is defined as a successful attack to the system which can lead to the system collapse. The numerical results will demonstrate that the blockchain based energy transaction framework is the most reliable system against cyber-attacks comparing with traditional centralized and modified decentralized energy transaction frameworks.
As an important part of the smart grid, the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) can provide various auxiliary services for the power grid and promote the use of renewable resources. However, there are various kinds of attacks in the V2G network. Based on consortium blockchain, this paper proposes a cross-domain authentication scheme for the security threat in the V2G network. This paper designs the trust model and the system architecture, and describes the scheme in detail. The signature and authentication of the scheme adopt the SM9 identity-based cryptographic algorithm. This scheme utilizes the fact that block chain technology is not easy to tamper with. It uses a hash algorithm to verify the certificate, reducing the number of public key algorithm signatures and verifications, making the solution efficient and scalable. The introduction of block chain technology provides new ideas and methods for solving the security problems in the Smart Grid.
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.
To address the need for trusted information across bulk power systems, our paper proposes a new type of distributed ledger (or Blockchain), for a shared management of sensitive information in power systems. We call our Blockchain design the Assured Volt Ampere Information Ledger (AVAIL). The AVAIL` abstractions fit data needs of prototypical grid applications in wide area protection and control, energy management systems, and markets. The contribution of this paper is to draw directly from the distinct requirements of these applications and the valid assumptions about the adversaries, to shape the AVAIL abstractions. AVAIL is unique for the following features: 1) Adversarial model: Our design principles consider an adversarial model where attacks affect physical resources; 2) Non-binary validity: in our setting we allow for a spectrum of validity; 3) Validity enforcement: validity in our setting is governed by physical laws.
Keaton A. Wheeler, Anthony W. Bowers, Charlie H. Wong, Jonathan Y. Palmer · 5 authors
This paper conducts a load and power quality analysis on a 3-feeder distribution system with a cryptocurrency mining system connected. The study includes power factor and harmonic distortion analysis of actual measured 15-minute data over three days in conjunction with measurements of startup and steady state waveforms to determine the load profile of a cryptocurrency mine when connecting to the electrical grid. In addition, comments are made on the effect of the substation transformer. In the context of this paper, multiple load levels are investigated through a thorough analysis of a sample test system. The effects of the cyptocurrency mine are then quantified through comparison to standards indicated in IEEE Std. 519.
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.
Alessio Meloni, Syam Madanapalli, Sanil Kumar Divakaran, Steven F. Browdy · 8 authors
While initially conceived as a system for cryptocurrency transactions' validation among untrusted parties, blockchain technology has gained momentum as a tool that can theoretically be applied to many domains beyond the intended one. Among these domains, one of the biggest and most promising is the Internet of Things. The IEEE 1931.1 WG is currently working on the definition of an Internet standard for technical and functional interoperability of federated IoT systems for Real-Time Onsite Operations Facilitation (ROOF) that operate and function in a secure, semi-autonomous, and decentralized manner. Blockchain technology can play a key role in accomplishing this goal. In this article, after discussing the use of blockchain technology in the IoT, the architectural framework as well as the use of blockchain technology in the IEEE 1931.1 standard are discussed in terms of advantages brought, criticalities, and future improvements that are necessary for fruitful deployment within ROOF.
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
Ferdinando Bosco, Vincenzo Croce, Giuseppe Raveduto
In the last years the interest around blockchain technologies is increasing. The peculiarity of this technology is to offer some relevant features as decentralization, transparency and reliability by design. Initially the application field was principally the financial one, but over the time many others have been investigated. In this paper we are reporting a real case of study in the financial sector, applied to the renewable energy exchange in a local district. In particular, this study reports the development of a Financial Platform, based on a private implementation of Ethereum blockchain, that enables a series of services for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) investments. The Platform implements a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trustable energy marketplace, price-based, addressing both the RES Financial investors and the district energy prosumers. The amounts of energy exchanged and their monetary counter values are represented by specific “tokens”, automatically exchanged by participants to track and record trades, ensuring auditability. The financial services offered to the investors range from an investment performance monitoring to more complex models of shared revenues and equity. The marketplace and all the participants within the microgrid are nodes of the blockchain. All the platform features were implemented exploiting Ethereum smart contracts, ensuring trustworthiness and transparency.
Local energy markets could play a very important role in future electric power systems, allowing small electricity producers/consumers to trade within a small geographical area. In this context, an important challenge to allow the proper operation of a local energy market is to devise efficient and economic computational platforms in charge of data storage, data communication, and any other relevant computational requirements. Fortunately, the recent developments in blockchain-based mechanisms open up promising approaches that can support the effective management of local energy markets. In fact, blockchain technology allows, in particular, to carry out decentralised payments without involving a third party in charge of keeping track of the trades performed, which can potentially simplify and enhance the management of a local energy market significantly. Motivated by this, this paper will study the use of the blockchainbased Ethereum platform as the computational support for a local energy market. Specifically, this paper addresses the scalability of this platform in terms of number of participants in the local energy market, and in terms of trading frequency. With this purpose, computer simulations are carried out for a market that consists of day-ahead trading and real-time trading. The day-ahead mechanism trades energy quantities in such a way that flexible demand can be shifted to balance inflexible supply, and the real-time mechanism trades energy in such a way that flexible loads cover deviations from the day-ahead settlement. The results illustrate that the Ethereum platform is sufficiently scalable, allowing to manage a local energy market with a large number of participants and a high trading frequency.
With the promotion of power energy market reform, it has been a trend to allow distributed energy agents and other multi-subject agents to participate in the market competition. However, due to the existing power market mechanism is designed according to the centralized power supply mode, the public services, power market transaction mechanism and government management system for distributed energy transaction is still more missing. The blockchain technology has the characteristics of decentralization, transparency, fairness, openness and so on. Under the background of the transactive energy system, a decentralized distributed energy transaction mechanism based on blockchain smart contract technology is proposed, which includes auditing, bidding, clearing and settlement. It realizes P2P energy trading among prosumers.
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.
The U.S. power grid is a complex system of systems that requires a trustworthy, reliable, and secure global supply chain. A formidable challenge considering the increasing number of networked industrial control systems (ICS) and energy delivery systems (EDS) and growing number of intermediary distributors, vendors and integrators involved. Grid modernization has increased the use of “smart” energy devices that automate, digitize, network, and bring together the cyber-physical energy supply chain. In the current Energy Internet of Things (EIoT) environment, the growth of data speed and size requirements as well as the number of critical cyber assets has generated new North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) compliance requirements and cyber supply chain security challenges for vendors, regulators, and utilities. The issuance of Order No. 829 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) instructed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to confront cybersecurity supply chain risk management for ICS software and hardware, as well as the networking and computing services associated with Bulk Electric System (BES) operations. To meet these goals, current technology and processes must be improved to better identify, monitor, and audit vulnerable EIoT environments. This paper examines how blockchain technology can enable NERC CIP compliance as well as aid in the security of the BES supply chain through an immutable cryptographically signed distributed ledger that allows for improved data security, provenance and auditability.
Aug 1, 2018·2018 17th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/ 12th IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE)
While blockchain services hold great promise to improve many different industries, there are significant cybersecurity concerns which must be addressed. In this paper, we investigate security considerations for an Ethereum blockchain hosting a distributed energy management application. We have simulated a microgrid with ten buildings in the northeast U.S., and results of the transaction distribution and electricity utilization are presented. We also present the effects on energy distribution when one or two smart meters have their identities corrupted. We then propose a new approach to digital identity management that would require smart meters to authenticate with the blockchain ledger and mitigate identity-spoofing attacks. Applications of this approach to defense against port scans and DDoS, attacks are also discussed.
This paper presents a distributed Load Balancing Trade Framework (LBTF) with focus on demand response and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) security in smart grid. This comprehensive energy market model LBTF framework can achieve good balance in demand response in two ways. First way is utility-grid contract, which introduced a simple reward policy using distributed proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm in Blockchain to motivate consumer to use less energy in peak hours. Through this policy consensus algorithm reward electric units to the consumers in peak hours. And in second way scheme introduce Micro-grid contract, which is a peer to peer (P2P) trade in global market. Those consumer (prosumer) who can generate energy using renewable resources can sell their surplus energy to other consumer through this contract. Furthermore, hash functions, public key encryption and digital signatures have been used to provide privacy preserving to the consumers and integrity to the stored data.
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.