Blockchain for Future Smart Grid: A Comprehensive Survey

TL;DR

This paper surveys how blockchain technology can enhance security and decentralization in smart grids, highlighting recent research, practical projects, and future challenges in integrating blockchain with energy Internet systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain applications in smart grid security, including recent research, practical implementations, and future research directions.

Findings

Blockchain can address key security challenges in smart grids.

Recent research demonstrates effective blockchain-based solutions.

Several practical projects and trials are underway in this domain.

Abstract

The concept of smart grid has been introduced as a new vision of the conventional power grid to figure out an efficient way of integrating green and renewable energy technologies. In this way, Internet-connected smart grid, also called energy Internet, is also emerging as an innovative approach to ensure the energy from anywhere at any time. The ultimate goal of these developments is to build a sustainable society. However, integrating and coordinating a large number of growing connections can be a challenging issue for the traditional centralized grid system. Consequently, the smart grid is undergoing a transformation to the decentralized topology from its centralized form. On the other hand, blockchain has some excellent features which make it a promising application for smart grid paradigm. In this paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive survey on application of blockchain in smart grid. As such, we identify the significant security challenges of smart grid scenarios that can be addressed by blockchain. Then, we present a number of blockchain-based recent research works presented in different literatures addressing security issues in the area of smart grid. We also summarize several related practical projects, trials, and products that have been emerged recently. Finally, we discuss essential research challenges and future directions of applying blockchain to smart grid security issues.