A Lightweight_PAEKS-based energy scheduling model considering priority in MicroGrid

Priority-based energy scheduling is proposed, whereby the data utility of measured user information in smart meters, including the priority and power demand of power consumers and the maximum power supply of power suppliers, is leveraged to ensure that in the case of limited power resources within islanded microgrids, energy is allocated to power consumers in the order of high to low priority. Nonetheless, in terms of data utility, most existing strategies only consider high-priority power consumers, neglecting the priority of power suppliers and low-priority power consumers, thus damaging the fairness of low-priority consumers and the interests of power suppliers, to the detriment of these groups. Moreover, smart meters are vulnerable to data integrity attacks, which may result in the manipulation of measured user information during the forwarding process, thereby disrupting normal priority-based energy scheduling. Therefore, focusing on data utility without considering data security is insufficient. Researchers have extensively investigated how to secure smart meters within advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), primarily employing cryptography-based methods to encrypt user information in measured meters and decrypt it at the microgrid central controller (MGCC), thereby protecting the data confidentiality of user information during the forwarding process and preventing data tampering. However, the prevailing cryptographic methods used to secure smart meters are extremely complex, and make smart meters and local controllers on the forwarding path unable to obtain any user information in which embedded consumers’ priority and cannot leverage the data utility of priority to forward information accordingly. In other words, existing models cannot simultaneously achieve data confidentiality and data utility during the forwarding process. To solve these issues, this study investigates a Lightweight_PAEKS-based energy scheduling model considering priority in microgrid (LPESCP). As a lightweight solution, the LPESCP comprehensively considers data confidentiality and data utility, as well as the priority and fairness of all users, to ensure the security of smart meters and optimize energy scheduling. In particular, the data utility problem is solved by using an optimization model that aims to maximize the global satisfaction degree of all users in terms of priority and fairness. The Lightweight_PAEKS and Paillier encryption scheme are used so that nodes on the forwarding path can successfully match priority-related keyword and forward information in order of the keyword corresponding emergency coefficient indicating the urgency levels of information, ensuring data utility, while do not know the specific keyword, emergency coefficient and other information, ensuring data confidentiality. To verify the effectiveness of the LPESCP, experiments are conducted for three cases generated based on random numbers. The results show that the LPESCP model can effectively ensure energy supply to consumers, comprehensively considering data confidentiality and utility as well as priority and fairness of all users. In addition, the global satisfaction degree and time overhead are introduced as metrics to verify that the LPESCP strategy is more effective in providing greater global satisfaction degree and lower time overhead than existing priority-based energy scheduling models.