Skip to main content
OSTI.GOVU.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

Verifying the Computational Integrity of Power Grid Controls with Zero-Knowledge Proof

Conference ·
; ;

The control of future power grids is migrating from a centralized to a distributed/decentralized scheme to enable a massive penetration of distributed energy resources with rising dependence on communication infrastructure. A common assumption made for most existing distributed/decentralized controllers is that local controllers would faithfully follow the designated controller dynamics based on the data received from communication channels. However, with increased probability of cyberattacks on Operational Technology infrastructure, such an assumption could be risky because proper execution of the controller dynamics is then built on trust in secure communication and computation. In this work, we leverage a cryptography technology known as zero-knowledge scalable transparent arguments of knowledge (zk-STARK) to verify the computational integrity of power grid control algorithms, with projected linear dynamics-based control schemes as the initial proof-of-concept test case. The method presented here converts the cybersecurity challenge of data integrity for grid control into a subset of computational integrity.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
2222418
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-5D00-88145; MainId:88920; UUID:7070a9a8-83b7-448e-b046-28a165c5a8d2; MainAdminID:71142
Resource Relation:
Conference: Presented at the the 2023 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM), 16-20 July 2023, Orlando, Florida
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (12)

Projected gradient descent on Riemannian manifolds with applications to online power system optimization conference September 2016
Analysis and comparison of the main zero-knowledge proof scheme conference January 2022
Decentralized Optimal Projected Control of PV Inverters in Residential Microgrids * *This research was supported by ABB Corporate Research, Switzerland and ETH Zürich journal July 2017
Real-Time Feedback-Based Optimization of Distribution Grids: A Unified Approach journal September 2019
Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More conference May 2018
Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin conference May 2014
Decentralized voltage control of wind farm based on gradient projection method journal December 2020
Saddle-Flow Dynamics for Distributed Feedback-Based Optimization journal October 2019
Multiattribute SCADA-Specific Intrusion Detection System for Power Networks journal June 2014
Optimized Operational Cost Reduction for an EV Charging Station Integrated With Battery Energy Storage and PV Generation journal March 2019
Integration of distributed controllers: Power reference tracking through charging station and building coordination journal May 2022
Securing DNP3 Broadcast Communications in SCADA Systems journal August 2016

Similar Records

Related Subjects

POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
computational integrity
cybersecurity
gradient control algorithms
power system control
zero knowledge proofs
zk-STARK