Blockchain has been demonstrated to validate communication among devices on the smart grid and thereby enhance its resiliency.

Image: Genevieve Martin, ORNL, US DOE

The project by researchers at the US DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), believed to be a first for blockchain, has developed a framework to detect unusual activity on the grid, including data manipulation, spoofing and illicit changes to device settings.

Such activities could trigger cascading power outages as breakers are tripped by protection devices.

The framework named Grid Guard contains a combination of core cryptographic methods such as the secure hash algorithm and asymmetric cryptography, private permissioned blockchain, baselining configuration data, Raft consensus algorithm and the Hyperledger Fabric framework.

By relying on hashing and the Raft consensus algorithm, if an entity tries to illegitimately alter a record at one instance of the database the other ledger nodes are not altered. They work to cross-reference each other and easily locate any incorrectly added data and remove it.

“This framework gives us a totally new capability to rapidly respond to anomalies,” says Raymond Borges Hink, who led the research at ORNL.

“In the long run, we could more quickly identify an unauthorised system change, find its source and provide more trustworthy failure analysis. The goal is to limit the damage caused by a cyberattack or equipment failure.”

He adds that the system, which uses tamper-resistant blockchain to spread configuration and operational data redundantly across multiple servers, can also help to determine in real time which of the latter – a cyberattack or equipment failure – triggered the fault.

The data and equipment settings are constantly verified against a statistical baseline of normal voltage, frequency, breaker status and power quality. Equipment settings are collected at frequent intervals and compared to the last good configuration saved in the blockchain.

This allows rapid recognition of when and how settings were changed, whether those changes were authorised and what caused them.

The project is part of the ORNL-led Darknet initiative, funded by the DOE Office of Electricity, to secure the nation’s electricity infrastructure by shifting its communications to increasingly secure methods.

Cyber monitoring of the grid can involve the processing of significant volumes of data. With the hashing on the blockchain, the computation is performed on the bulk data, which saves energy and reduces the data storage space.

Following the demonstration of the Grid Guard framework in ORNL’s grid research testbed, the researchers are extending the approach to incorporate communications among renewable energy sources and multiple utilities.