An Effective Framework of Private Ethereum Blockchain Networks for Smart Grid

TL;DR

This paper presents a private Ethereum-based framework for smart grids that enhances data security and performance by modifying the mining difficulty, validated through simulation and real-world testing.

Contribution

It introduces a tailored private Ethereum network framework for smart grids with a modified mining process to improve throughput and security.

Findings

Significantly improved throughput and lower uncle rate compared to public Ethereum.

Effective data security for smart grid applications.

Framework applicable to various data storage systems in Ethereum.

Abstract

A smart grid is an important application in Industry 4.0 with a lot of new technologies and equipment working together. Hence, sensitive data stored in the smart grid is vulnerable to malicious modification and theft. This paper proposes a framework to build a smart grid based on a highly effective private Ethereum network. Our framework provides a real smart grid that includes modern hardware and a smart contract to secure data in the blockchain network. To obtain high throughput but a low uncle rate, the difficulty calculation method used in the mining process of the Ethereum consensus mechanism is modified to adapt to the practical smart grid setup. The performance in terms of throughput and latency are evaluated by simulation and verified by the real smart grid setup. The enhanced private Ethereum-based smart grid has significantly better performance than the public one. Moreover, this framework can be applied to any system used to store data in the Ethereum network.