A Novel Blockchain Supported Hybrid Authentication and Handshake Algorithm for Smart Grid

Smart grids (SGs) are technology-powered electricity networks that support bidirectional power and data flows. This allows real-time monitoring of demand and enhances the grid’s capability to dynamically adjust the generation and reduce the gap between supply and demand. However, implementing a smart grid in the power network comes with its own set of security challenges, such as cyber-security, distrust in participants, and lack of customer engagement due to various cyber-attacks. Such cyber-attacks will create distrust among consumers/prosumers to adopt the smart grid and distributed energy resources (DER) framework. To circumvent this, a blockchain-supported hybrid authentication and handshake algorithm (BSHAHA) for smart grids is proposed in this work, which authenticates data communication between peer-to-peer, aggregators, virtual power plants, and the grid. The algorithm was developed incorporating elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) and advanced encryption standards (AES) to enhance privacy and session security. The proposed algorithms are verified and tested using formal cyber-security tools, such as the Random oracle model and AVISPA as well as by informal security analysis. Furthermore, to simulate a real-time test environment, this paper utilized ns-3 network simulator to simulate different smart meter scenarios, and the proposed algorithms are tested for power consumption and scalability, and results are presented. Moreover, blockchain simulation was first done in the local blockchain using Ganache and Truffle IDE and later using the Holesky Ethereum test network and remix-IDE. Lastly, this paper presented a comparison analysis of power consumption for different consensus mechanisms.