PPFP: An Efficient Privacy-Preserving Fair Payment Protocol for V2G Based on Blockchain

Smart grid integrates communication and control technologies to enable optimal power transmission and distribution between grid operators and users. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is a crucial part of smart grid, which can realize two-way flow of information and electricity between electric vehicles (EV s) and smart grid. Each EV can not only charge itself, but also provide ancillary services such as feeding power back to smart grid. In order to function normally, V2G network has to continuously monitor the status of EV s by collecting enough information, which maybe lead to the exposure and malicious utilization of sensitive information like location and identity. This problem has become an obstacle to the widespread application of V2G network. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving fair payment mechanism called PPFP for service/electricity exchanges. PPFP achieves the fairness by introducing the zero- knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zk- SNARK). In addition, PPFP satisfies the privacy-preserving feature by leveraging the bitcoin-based timed commitment and zk-SNARK.