Enhancing power grid management and incident response mechanisms through consortium blockchain

Enhancing the resilience and reliability of power grids is crucial amid rising cyber threats and system complexities. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an energy-efficient, consortium blockchain-based global alarm system for power grid management. Using smart contracts and the proof of-authority consensus algorithm, the alarm system triggers global alarms upon detecting local anomalies, ensuring a prompt response to partition the power grid and mitigate failures. The effectiveness is validated by simulating the Iberian power system with 15 providers from various regions. Key metrics, such as load shedding, damage reduction, energy consumption, latency, and transaction costs, are used to assess the performance. Through simulations, we show that the blockchain-based system effectively limits the damage propagation and the load shedding during cascading failures by delaying the onset of instability and maintaining lower damage levels compared to non-blockchain scenarios. Our investigations reveal that the proposed global alarm mechanism reduces the damage and load shedding by up to 29% and 87%, respectively, showcasing its potential for preventing widespread outages.