A Blockchain-Enabled Authentication and Conserved Data Aggregation Scheme for Secure Smart Grids

The construction of smart grids provides many benefits. Computational cost, however, drastically grows with an increase in scale since a large amount of data is generated, transmitted, collected, and treated. Although data aggregation technology is helpful when adopting smart grid applications, corresponding security and performance issues should be considered while implementing the mechanism. In this paper, a blockchain-enabled authenticated conserved data aggregation scheme is proposed to balance security concerns and the computational cost of the smart grid. Furthermore, several functions are developed in our scheme to highlight the contributions. First, efficient cryptographic algorithms are integrated instead of computationally-expensive ones. Second, the proposed scheme seamlessly incorporates a blockchain system into a smart grid for better decentralization which can avoid the possible threats and high cost of a centralized system. Third, the scheme is scalable, which can be adapted to manage a great number of metering devices. Fourth, the aggregational operations in our design combine power data and signature, which is more practical. Finally, the proposed scheme covers a one-time key pair and signature mechanism, thus upgrading the privacy protection of blockchain applications in the smart grid.