Blockchain-based Sensor Data Validation for Security in the Future Electric Grid

This paper explores the feasibility of using blockchain technology to validate that measured sensor data approximately follows a known accepted model to enhance sensor data security in electricity grid systems. This provides a more robust information infrastructure that can be secured against not only failures but also malicious attacks. Such robustness is valuable in envisioned electricity grids that are distributed at a global scale including both small and large nodes. While this may be valuable, blockchain's security benefits come at the cost of computation of cryptographic functions and the cost of reaching distributed consensus. We report experimental results showing that, for the proposed application and assumptions, the time for these computations is small enough to not negatively impact the overall system operation. From this we conclude that it is indeed worthwhile to further study the application of blockchain technology in the electricity grid, removing the assumptions we make and integrating blockchain in a much more extensive manner. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first instance where blockchain is used to validate the measured sensor data in the electricity grid, thus providing security to other system operations.