Enabling Secure and Privacy Preserving Communications in Smart Grids

Smart grids are electricity networks that can intelligently integrate the action of all connected users - producers, consumers, and prosumers (i.e., producers and consumers at the same time) - in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure electricity supplies. Smart grids rely on a two-way communication infrastructures in which energy measurement data taken at users located smart meters, as well as control information, must be exchanged in real-time or - at least - near real-time, while simultaneously guaranteeing a secure and privacy preserving communication. This paper addresses such a problem by presenting a distributed communication architecture that guarantees the privacy of fine-grained users data while enabling the energy supplier to access aggregate energy measurements and per-user coarse-grained data for billing purposes. The key idea underlying the proposed architecture is to adopt a secure multiparty computation method based on a verifiable secret sharing of the keys used by the smart meters to encrypt their sensitive data. This approach allows to remove the need for any intermediate aggregator element with clear benefits in terms of scalability and robustness.

Smart Grids (SG) may be the most significant technological change in the history of electric grids, that can help curb the looming energy crisis worldwide, with intelligent generation, transmission and distribution of energy using a robust communication network. Power lines are a very promising solution for carrying data to serve as broadband access network in the context of SG, along with the wireless communication techniques. This paper investigates the design and simulation of a digital communication system optimized for Power Line Communication (PLC) in Smart Grids. For the proposed PLC transceiver, we consider Discrete Multitone (DMT) modulation based on a modified bit loading technique for the subcarriers. Our results reveal that the proposed incremental bit loading algorithm enhances data rate, and reduces computation time, as compared to the originally proposed incremental bit loading algorithm for PLC.

The IoT Smart grid systems require privacy-sensitive, scalable, and secure communication, but the traditional cryptographic methods are susceptible to quantum attacks, central failure, and high computational costs. In this paper, the author presents a multi-layered structure that uses various yet complementary approaches in order to solve these issues. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is applied to create quantum-resilient key management to provide the secure transmission against future quantum attacks. Homomorphic Encryption (HE) allows the computations to be performed on encrypted data to preserve privacy and minimize the risks of exposure at some point during the processing. Federated Learning (FL) is used to assist the decentralized intelligence, where anomaly detection models are trained together without the need of transferring sensitive raw data. The combination of the two techniques produces a hybrid architecture that is both highly secure and scalable. Experimental validation on real-world smart grid data indicates the 42% communication overhead reduction versus traditional encryption, a 35% improvement in anomaly detection with FL and strong resistance to quantum attack and side-channel attack simulation. The findings support the fact the suggested solution provides end-to-end confidentiality, integrity, and performance efficiency, which will form a basis of quantum-resilience and privacy-preserving communication in future smart grid IoT network.

Smart grid has become the hot topic to domestic and foreign about the development trend of power grid in recent years, and communication technology is foundation of the development of smart grid; the paper forecasts the smart grid communications automation and development trend.Further from intelligent dispatching center, smart grid, smart distribution grid and users, in view of the existing and emerging intelligent and automatic application were communication needs analysis, and provide a reliable basis for the smart grid communications planning.

ABSTRACTSmart grid is a new type of power grid that integrates advanced information communication technology and measurement technology into conventional power grids. It provides an efficient and intelligent energy service. However, the entities in the smart grid are easily hacked and sometimes even collapsed; then the whole grid system could be jeopardized. Therefore, the security of user privacy and communication in smart grids is still facing great challenges. In this paper, we propose a robust, distributed, and privacy-preserving aggregation scheme, RDPA for short, which uses the homomorphic Paillier cryptosystem technique combined with signature technique to ensure the confidentiality and integrality of users’ electricity consumption. In addition, we employ the threshold secret sharing technology and secret factors injection method to improve the robustness of smart grid systems. For example, RDPA can still run well even when a gateway is hacked. The experimental results and analysis demonstrate that RDPA can resist various attacks and protect user privacy, and its security and performance are better than other related schemes.

Integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart grids has revolutionized the energy sector, enabling real-time data collection and efficient energy distribution. However, this integration also introduces significant security challenges, particularly data encryption. Traditional encryption algorithms used in IoT are vulnerable to various attacks, and the advent of quantum computing exacerbates these vulnerabilities. To address the above challenges, this paper proposes a novel encryption mechanism, the Quantum-Resistant Hybrid Encryption for IoT (QRHE-IoT), designed to enhance the security of communications in IoT-enabled smart grids. QRHE-IoT combines the strengths of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms and incorporates quantum-resistant algorithms to provide robust security. This paper explains the QRHE-IoT mechanism, its theoretical basis, and how it addresses the security challenges in smart grid communications. It also presents the results of tests conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of QRHE-IoT in a simulated smart grid environment. The proposed QRHE-IoT mechanism presents a promising solution to these challenges, offering robust security for smart grid communications in the face of emerging threats, including quantum computing.

The large amount of differentiated quality-of-service traffic generated by modern smart grids necessitates efficient scheduling schemes for the uplink traffic. This paper proposes a cross-layer time-division multiple access scheduling scheme destined for broadband power-line communications (BB-PLC)-access networks. The scheme determines the topology of the smart-grid communications (SGC) PLC trees formed across the power grid, identifies the noninterfering segments in the tree graph, and schedules the uplink transmission. The scheme is based on appropriately adjusting the injected power of the SGC tree nodes following a graph-based distributed approach in the attempt to enhance slot reuse. The scheme has been tested and assessed for typical SGC networks deployed in rural and urban areas, considering both aggregated and nonaggregated SGC traffic. The relevant simulations verify that by reducing the interference due to PLC transmission, the proposed adaptive power-control-based scheme can significantly minimize the injected power, enhance throughput, and reduce delay on an SGC cell basis. The reduction in schedule length depends drastically on the maximum-allowed injected power and the topology of the SGC tree and may reach 70% when combined with data aggregation.

In this paper, we present a signcryption scheme called CP_ABSC based on Ciphertext-Policy Attribute Based Encryption (CP_ABE)[7] to secure the multicast communications in smart grids that require access control, data encryption, and authentication to ensure message integrity and confidentiality. CP_ABSC provides algorithms for key management, signcryption, and designcryption. It can be used to signcrypt a message based on the access rights specified by the message itself. A user can designcrypt a ciphertext if and only if it possesses the attributes required by the access structure of the data. Thus CP_ABSC effectively defines a multicast group based on the access rights of the data specified by the data itself, which differs significantly from the traditional Internet based multicast where the destination group is predetermined and must be known by the data source. CP_ABSC provides collusion attack resistance, message authentication, forgery prevention, and confidentiality. It can be easily applied in smart grids to secure the instructions/commands broadcast from a utility company to multiple smart meters (push-based multicast) and the data retrieved from a smart meter to multiple destinations (pull-based multicast). Compared to CP_ABE, CP_ABSC combines encryption with signature at a lower computational cost for signcryption and a slightly higher cost in designcryption for signature verification. We also consider the adoption of attribute-based signature (ABS), and conclude that CP_ABSC has a much lower computational cost than ABS.

Over the last decade, Internet of Things (IoTs) have brought radical changes to the means and forms of communication for monitoring and control of a large number of applications including Smart Grid (SG). Traditional energy networks have been modernized to SGs to boost the energy industry in the context of efficient and effective power management, performance, real-time control and information flow using two-way communication between utility provides and end-users. However, integrating two-way communication in SG comes at the cost of cyber security vulnerabilities and challenges. In the context of SG, node compromise is a severe security threat due to the fact that a compromised node can significantly impact the operations and security of the SG network. Therefore, in this chapter, Key Management Scheme for Communication Layer in the Smart Grid (KMS-CL-SG) has proposed. In order to achieve a secure end-to-end communication we assign a unique key to each node in the group.

Summary from only given. Three features characterize electricity generation from renewable sources: it is located far away from where it will be used; it is decentralized; and it is volatile. What looks like a long list of technical details actually conceals a true revolution in terms of energy supply. In Germany, we are in a special situation. Although the EU Commission wants fewer fossil fuels to be burned and more renewable energies to be used in electricity generation in all member states, the time pressure has increased dramatically for Germany because of the upcoming energy turnaround. Because of the scheduled phasing out of all nuclear power plants by 2022, we must establish a Smart Grid over the next ten years and provide a stable energy supply for a prosperous industrial nation. The three features of producing energy from renewable sources add up to three problem areas that must be resolved for the Smart Grid to succeed: · The generation of energy far from where it is used, especially on offshore wind farms at sea, requires a major upgrade in transmission of power from the north of Germany to the south. · To reorganize central power generation and supply renewable energies that are produced locally, we need more and improved data about the current state of the grid. · To compensate for volatility, we must be able to respond faster at distribution level. This requires automatic voltage regulation in the medium- and low-voltage grid. Smart Grid will serve as the nervous system of energy supply after the energy evolution. In addition to being an electricity network, it is also a communication network in which intelligent devices record energy supply and consumption data in real-time and adjust the grid voltage automatically. For this energy grid, the intelligent devices installed must have two attributes: standards compliance and IT security. Besides expanding the transmission capacities, the use of uniform and secure communication protocols is the biggest challenge in building this central infrastructure.

Smart grid is an essential part of the world's changing energy landscape. The uptake of smart grid by utilities is however hampered by the perceived complexity and large capital investment required to implement resilient Information Communication Technology (ICT) and networks that can support self-healing smart grids. Furthermore, failure to meet stringent smart grid communication reliability requirements can have disastrous consequences for grid owners and users. Many of the challenges utilities face with their smart grid ICT network development plans can be attributed to a reliance on conventional designs centred on expanding network hardware infrastructure in vast grid networks. What is needed to overcome these challenges is alternative ways of designing smart grid communication networks, using software defined approaches. This paper proposes a framework that supports software defined designs by combining the principles of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. Using the frameworks of software defined systems and virtualisation, our proposed architecture aims to provide a more flexible and affordable approach to developing and maintaining grid communication networks while offering a high level of network reliability, required for various smart grid applications. An evaluation of the implementation of this architecture in a design, based on a real city distribution grid, shows that a software defined communication network is easy to implement when using virtual machines running on existing computer infrastructure and that it is capable of supporting the network functions required for improving communication reliability. We conclude that this approach can potentially promote the adoption of smart grid by utilities while offering new innovative ways for smart grid developers to improve their grid designs.

Smart grid is a next generation electricity network that transmits electricity to end users and enable two way digital communication for providing remote reading and other advanced metering functions. For Smart grid domains to interact with each other, a reliable communication is required. This reliable two-way communication can be achieved with the use of small cells technology (femto, pico, etc), relay, or any of the transmission scheme proposed in 5G systems. With the use of femto cells and relay nodes in the network, the allocation of resources for the purpose of smart grid communication needs to be done efficiently. Power being one of the resource has been studied for its allocation in a femto cell network for Smart grid communication, however, transmission reliability and interference is generally ignored. In this paper, we investigate the problem of power allocation in a Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) with femto cell and relay technology as a communication mechanism. We formulate the problem as a power minimization problem such that the transmission reliability is ensured. Our performance evaluation shows that the average transmit power required for transmission through femto cell is 99% less as compared with cooperative transmission.

As a result of the old-style electric grid's inability to handle the extensive incorporation of renewable energy resources and distributed renewable energy resources into the electric grid. In the twenty-first century, smart grid technology has entered the picture. Because smart grids operate on two-way communication, communication and information technology are critical to the smart grid's effective operation. The advanced version of the smart grid structure is presented in this article. Furthermore, this article discusses existing and advanced communication and information technology. Finally, the manuscript discusses future research advancements in communication and the most crucial information technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, fog and edge computing, and blockchain in the smart grid. So, the smart grid can manage the massive integration of renewable energy resources while providing customers with efficient, sustainable, and reliable power.KeywordsIoT-Internet of ThingICT-Information and Communication TechnologyCC: Cloud Computing

The smart grid provides a platform for thirdparty service providers to remotely monitor and manage energy usage for consumers. At the same time, the involvement of service providers brings a new set of security threats to the smart grid. In this article, we first identify the cyber security challenges on service provision in the smart grid. Then we present two main security issues related to service provision and provide potential solutions. The first one is to establish a secure communication procedure among the electric utility, consumers, and service providers. The second one is to provide a privacy-preserving yet accountable authentication framework among the smart grid entities without relying on any trusted third party. Finally, we suggest directions of future work on secure service provision by describing several open issues. 1979-2012 IEEE.

The management and control of the renewable energy sources in smart grid are currently the most challenging topics in this area of research. Since renewable energy sources are potentially located away from urban areas, cellular communications are most suitable for this purpose. In this paper, we propose an LTE-based priority and delay oriented multicast scheduling technique designed specifically for smart grid management purposes. Using multicast communications in smart grid is most suitable since various messages should be sent to multiple renewable energy sources simultaneously. This is to ensure that these sources are coordinated in performing the same action within a certain time constraint to avoid any power shortages or other issues within the system. We evaluate our proposed technique and compare it with other general purpose multicast scheduling techniques. Results show that the proposed technique offers an enhanced performance over other techniques in delivering smart grid traffic while maintaining good performance for the other real-time traffic, such as voice traffic, within the network.