Access control for interoperable energy management systems using Verifiable Credentials

Emerging energy management systems (EMS) involve devices and services provided by multiple stakeholders. In order to improve the interoperability of these systems, state of the art efforts propose an interoperability middleware that mediates the communication between end-user applications and EMS components. The potential lack of trust between the different stakeholders raises the need for fine-grained access control mechanisms. However, extending the middleware to support access control in a secure and usable way is a challenging problem. In this paper, we present a solution that achieves fine-grained authorization using Verifiable Credentials (VCs). Our solution leverages VC properties to enable end-users to combine authorizations issued by different entities. Additionally, our solution integrates a cloud-based VC wallet that hides the authorization process from end-user applications, thus facilitating interoperability among EMSes and the development of new, secure applications.