Blockchain Based Security and Privacy Scheme for Smart Meter Communication

Smart grid is considered as next generation power system which performs automated control and monitoring operations to make it self-resilience. Advanced Metering Infrastructure is an essential part of smart grid which enables two-way communication thereby providing real-time communication link between consumer and grid operators. Emergence of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) at end user make AMI's operation more challenging. Smart Meters (SMs) are key components in AMI that sends Power Consumption Data (PCD) of home appliances to Distributed System Operator (DSO). PCD received at DSO can be used for real time pricing applications, real time energy consumption, automatic diagnostic, daily energy metering and tasks such as billing, monitoring, planning and predicting of energy usage. In the context of selling of excess energy generated at DER's to the grid, SMs participates in Demand Response (DR) applications to perform energy trading. Revealing PCD of a home leads to privacy breach, hence it is necessary to achieve secure communication between SM and DSO. At the same time, it is essential to make energy trading transparent. To address this issue, this paper proposes a cloud based private blockchain framework to accomplish secure communication between SM and DSO without compromising privacy. Furthermore, trust between SM and DSO is achieved through smart contracts. Performance evaluation of the proposed blockchain shows its applicability to the said environment.