crisis management
Researchers use blockchain to make power grids more resilient
Improve data security and validation while maintaining power efficiency
Published: Monday, December 12, 2022 – 12:01
(Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Oak Ridge, Tennessee) — Blockchain is best known for securing digital currency payments, but researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory believe there is another kind. We use blockchain to track the exchange of This is the first time blockchain has been used to verify communications Between devices on the electrical grid.
The project is part of the ORNL-led Darknet initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Power, to protect the nation’s power infrastructure by transitioning communications to increasingly secure methods. .
Two-way communication between grid-powered electronic equipment and new edge devices, from solar panels to electric vehicle chargers to intelligent home appliances, increases cyber risk. Led by Raymond Borges Hink, his ORNL research team is making power grids more resilient by providing a reliable framework for communication between electrical devices. The team has developed a framework for detecting anomalous activities such as data manipulation, impersonation, and unauthorized changes to device settings. These activities can cause cascading blackouts as breakers are tripped by protective devices.
“This framework gives us a whole new set of capabilities to react quickly to anomalies,” says Borges Hink. “In the long term, we are able to identify unauthorized system changes more quickly, pinpoint their causes, and provide more reliable fault analysis. Our goal is to limit the damage caused by cyberattacks and equipment failures. That’s it.”
This approach uses a tamper-proof blockchain to redundantly distribute configuration and operational data across multiple servers. Data and equipment settings are constantly validated against normal voltage, frequency, breaker status and power quality statistical baselines. Equipment settings are frequently collected and compared to the last good configuration stored on the blockchain. This allows you to quickly recognize when and how settings were changed, whether those changes were approved, and what caused them.
“Our system helps us determine in near real time whether a failure was caused by a cyberattack or induced by a natural phenomenon,” says Borges Hink. “This is the first implementation of blockchain to enable this kind of data validation between substations, control centers and instrumentation infrastructure.”
This kind of monitoring requires processing vast amounts of information. Blockchain uses a cryptographic method called hashing. In this method, mathematical calculations are performed on large amounts of data and represented as numbers within the blockchain.this Save energy and reduce the space required to store data. Blockchain processes thousands of transactions and verifies content per second for each Intelligent Grid device.
Researchers demonstrated the framework on a test bed within the DOE’s Grid Research Integration and Deployment Center (GRID-C) at ORNL. Built under the leadership of ORNL’s Emilio Piesciorovsky, the Advanced Protection Lab uses commercial grade hardware in a closed electrical loop to mimic the architecture of a real substation. This allows you to simulate cyberattacks and accidental misconfigurations with low risk. Team’s validation framework detects both. Researchers extend the approach to include communication between renewable energy sources and multiple utilities.
Other ORNL researchers who contributed to this project include Emilio Piesciorovsky, Aaron Werth, Annabelle Lee, Gary Hahn, and Yarom Polsky.
The University of Tennessee Battelle manages ORNL for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Office of Science, the largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences of the United States, is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, see: https://energy.gov/science.
