Energy consumption monitoring using private blockchain network based on Ethereum smart contracts

Abstract

Monitoring current consumption in a smart grid involves, along with the acquisition of power consumption in different nodes of the network (through current and voltage sensors), the transmission of measured values through a local network to a central server. From a security point of view, communications between nodes and the central server are exposed. Also, the central server may be exposed to catastrophic attacks or faults that lead to data loss. The solution proposed by us in this paper, uses a private blockchain network and smart contracts based on Ethereum for the transmission of data from nodes. The advantages are: data integrity is ensured, synchronization between nodes as well as ensuring data protection by multiplying them on all nodes. The disadvantage would seem to be related to the increase in energy consumption that each blockchain node involves. As will be presented in the paper, this disadvantage will be removed by its own blockchain solution in which the consensus algorithm is adapted to low power consumption. Together with the own archiving method presented in the article, the solution is an efficient one, implementable at the level of nodes. Data will be presented in comparative analyzes with classic server solutions.