A proposed blockchain technology approach for securing IoT-enabled renewable and grid metering systems

Abstract

The growing adoption of renewable energy and smart grid systems in complex energy networks, have revealed reliability, transparency and security concerns. Through a two-way relationship between prosumers and utility providers, prosumers send their excess energy to the grid for financial credits, which is beneficial but further complicates the energy network. University institutions in Ghana such as Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), suffer financially from billing inconsistencies and data tampering as a result of this poor energy monitoring architecture. Averagely KNUST consumes 2.5 million kWh of energy per month, equivalent to a bill of about GHS 5 million. Attempts to contest the utility provider's billing is difficult, owing to the absence of concrete, verifiable evidence to substantiate any discrepancies. This study presents a blockchain-IoT enabled metering framework, for secure energy monitoring to enhance transparency. MATLAB/Simulink, MQTT and InfluxDB were used for generation, publishing and local storage of energy data. Python was used to hash energy metrics before submitting to an Ethereum testnet (Ganache), through a smart contract. From the study, the proposed architecture allows verifiability, prevents data tampering and enables energy monitoring with an estimated gas cost ranging from $0.16–$3.56 per transaction on the Ethereum mainnet.