Researchers use blockchain to increase resilience in electrical grids
Newswise — Although blockchain is best known for securing digital currency payments, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using it to track another type of exchange: It’s the first time blockchain has ever been used to validate communications between devices on electrical net.
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 moving communications to increasingly secure methods.
Cyber risk has increased with two-way communication between mains electronics and new edge devices ranging from solar panels to electric car chargers and smart home electronics. By providing a trust framework for communication between electrical devices, an ORNL research team led by Raymond Borges Hink increases the resilience of the electrical grid. The team developed a framework to detect unusual activity, including data manipulation, forgery and illegal changes to device settings. These activities can trigger cascading blackouts as circuit breakers are tripped by protection devices.
“This framework gives us a completely new ability to react quickly to irregularities,” Borges Hink said. “In the long run, we can more quickly identify an unauthorized system change, find the source and provide a more reliable error analysis. The aim is to limit the damage caused by a cyber attack or equipment failure.”
The approach uses tamper-proof blockchain to spread configuration and operational data redundantly across multiple servers. The data and equipment settings are continuously verified against a statistical baseline for normal voltage, frequency, switch status and power quality. Equipment settings are collected at frequent intervals and compared to the last good configuration stored in the blockchain. This provides quick recognition of when and how settings were changed, whether these changes were authorized, and what caused them.
“Our system helps determine in near real time whether a failure was triggered by a cyber attack or induced by natural events,” said Borges Hink. “This is the first implementation of blockchain that enables this type of data validation between a substation, a control center and metering infrastructure.”
This type of monitoring requires processing a huge amount of information. The blockchain uses a cryptographic method called hashing, where a mathematical calculation is performed on the bulk data to represent it as numbers in the blockchain. This saves energy and reduces the space needed to store data. The blockchain processes thousands of transactions per second for each intelligent grid device, validating its content.
Researchers demonstrated the framework in a test bed at DOE’s Grid Research and Integration Deployment Center, or GRID-C, at ORNL. Built under the direction of ORNL’s Emilio Piesciorovsky, the advanced protection lab uses commercial hardware in a closed electrical loop to mimic the architecture of a real substation. This provides a low-risk way to simulate cyber attacks or accidental misconfigurations. The team’s validation framework can detect both. Researchers are expanding the approach to include communication between renewable energy sources and multiple utilities.
Other ORNL researchers who have contributed to the project include Piesciorovsky, Aaron Werth, Annabelle Lee, Gary Hahn, and Yarom Polsky.
UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, is working to solve some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit
