Exploration of Block chain Technology in

Electric Power transaction

XiPeiyu1,2,ZhangQian1,2,WangHaining1,2,ZhaoHaoyue3,WangChunyan1,2
(1.Nari Group Corporation/State Grid Electric Power Research Institute Nanjing 210003 China
2.Beijing Kedong Electric Power Control System Co., Ltd. Beijing 100194 China
3. North China Electric Power University˅

AbstractüüElectricity transaction involves the data distributed system is formedǤ

which is closely related to the interests of the enterprise,
such as the entry of the market members, the
2˅ Openness. The system is open to all, except the
declaration of electricity transaction, the settlement
and the execution of the contract. It is necessary to take
private information of the node is encrypted, the
the necessary measures to ensure the security of the other data is open to all, anyone can query the
electricity transaction data while completing the block chain data information through the hash
electricity transaction. By combining the block chain value of the block header, so the information of
technology, the information security strategy is the whole system is highly transparent. A large
formulated to effectively guarantee the security of the number of block-chain programs are open
power transaction data, to solve the friction of the source, and data and rules are accessible to all
electricity transaction, to promote the legitimacy of the nodes across the network.
power transaction and to maintain the normal order of
the market.
3˅ Autonomy. The block chain adopts a consistent
Key words: consensus algorithm, which enables all nodes in
the whole system to exchange data confidently
in an environment without any trust
%ORFN FKDLQ ˈ (QHUJ\ ,QWHUQHW ˈ (OHFWULFLW\
endorsement. Trust in "people" and institutions
WUDQVDFWLRQˈLQIRUPDWLRQVDIHW\
becomes trust in machines and mathematical
algorithms, and no one can interfere with the
I. INTRODUCTION
proper operation of the system.

A s a revolutionary technology in the field of

information, block chain technology has also
received extensive attention in the field of electricity.
4˅ Information can not be tampered with. Once the
system transaction information is verified by
each node, it forms an immutable record to be
The transaction system based on block chain has the
stored unless more than 51% of the nodes in the
characteristics of decentralization and high security,
system can simultaneously be controlled to
in which each transaction is traceable and difficult to
intervene in the verification of the transaction.
tamper with. The research of block chain technology
Otherwise, the tampering of the database on a
in energy Internet is in the ascendant. Combining the
single node will not play any role, and will also
transaction link of energy Internet with block chain
be detected by the whole network node and
technology can effectively solve the transaction
excluded by the system. Therefore, the block
friction, maintain the order of the market and
chain data stability and reliability is extremely
guarantee the legitimacy of the transaction. In the
high.
context of global energy interconnection, the
electricity market is bound to face complex trading
5˅ Anonymity. Because the exchange of data
and settlement problems. It is of great significance to
between nodes follows a fixed algorithm, the
explore the use of block-chain technology to ensure
parties do not have to disclose their identities,
the steady development of the energy Internet.
but use the procedural rules in the block chain to
make each other trust themselves.
A. A Survey of current Block chain Technology
6˅ Safe and credible. Block chain technology uses
The blockchain technology integrates a series of asymmetric cryptography to encrypt the data,
technical systems with the following characteristics: and makes use of the powerful computational
power formed by consensus algorithm to resist
˅ Decentralization. The verification, accounting, the external attack, which ensures that the block
storage, maintenance and transmission of block chain data can not be tampered with and can not
chain data are based on the distributed system be forged, so it has high data security.
structure. Thus, a decentralized and trusted

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 The above features of block chain technology can q
solve the existing three major pain points in most O z
fields: centralization, security and trust. Block chain p ˄1-2˅
is essentially a mathematical solution for
establishing trust mechanism between trading parties.
It uses distributed network to store, transmit and Multiplying the probability density of the
prove data, and forms a distributed accounting extension length distribution of the
system through distributed data block storage. attackerundefineds block with the probability that
Instead of relying on the central server, all data the attacker can still successfully pursue the chain of
changes or transaction items are recorded on each honesty in this case, the probability of the
node in the network system. attackerundefineds tampering success qs is as
follows:
II. ‡•‡ƒ”…Š‘–Š‡’’Ž‹…ƒ–‹‘‘ˆŽ‘……Šƒ‹
‡…Š‘Ž‘‰›‹Ž‡…–”‹…‘™‡”–”ƒ•ƒ…–‹‘
A. Analysis of security characteristics of power
transaction block chain.
Power transaction block chain system does not
rely on third party intermediaries or trust institutions.
All the participating nodes in the system are equal
and all nodes make decisions together to verify the
legitimacy of the transaction. Even if some nodes in
the system are attacked and destroyed, the whole
block chain system will not be damaged. At the same
time, block chain guarantees the traceability and
irrevocability of information through encryption
mechanism, digital signature and other techniques.
Even so, the block chain still faces many security
threats. Taking the PoW mechanism adopted by
Bitcoin as an example, the attack model is used to
analyze the potential risk of attack in the block chain.
The evolution between the honest chain and the
attack chain can be described by a binary tree
random walk process. The probability of attackers
successfully eliminating the gap between z blocks is
similar to that of gamblers. The probability of this
attacker successfully catching up with the chain of
honesty is calculated as follows:
­1, p d q
° 2
qz ®§ q ·
°¨ p ¸ , p ! q
¯© ¹ ˄1-1˅
p q
Where and are the probabilities of the
honest node and the attack node to obtain the next
block bookkeeping right respectively, and 
The attackerundefineds block extension length is
consistent with the Poisson distribution, with the
expected values as follows:
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O k e O °­ q p  , k d z
f z k
qs ¦
k 0
®
k ! °̄1, k ! z
˄1-3˅
In order to illustrate the relationship between the
attackerundefineds success rate and the block gap Z,
the attack node gets the relationship between the
probability of the next block billing right of the
attacker, and the experimental results of the
simulation using the Matlab are shown in Figure 1. It
can be seen that the attackerundefineds tampering
success rate decreases exponentially with the
increase of the block gap Z, and can be found in the
block gap phase. At the same time, the success rate
of block forgery increases sharply with the increase
of the attackerundefineds forgery ability (computing
power). When the attacker grasps the power of more
than 50% of the whole network, it can realize double
payment by recalculation of the confirmed block or
control new area block, and prevent the confirmation
and prevent other nodes from producing new block.
Fig. 1. success rate of tampering
B. Security Strategy of Power Exchange Block chain
1˅The information on the block chain is not
tampered with, but this is based on the security of the
private key. The commonly used private key storage
scheme is used by each user in the block chain
system to encrypt the private key on the
userundefineds device, but this method cannot resist
Page2/5 730
 the attacker using the user equipment off line after
obtaining the user undefineds
equipment.Dictionaries attack, so block chains are
faced with the risk of stealing private keys. In
general, there is still a lack of trusted environment
for private key authentication, and the distributed
storage structure of block chains is not conducive to
the reissue management of private keys. As shown in
Figure 2 private key sharing and reconfiguration
to maintain safe passage.
In order to illustrate the computational overhead
of the above mechanism, the class function provided
by Miracle library is used to simulate based on C
environment. Table 1 shows the request time for a
different (tn) combination of digital signatures.
TABLE I
diagrams, 
ȋȌ

End
start Request time t 3 t  n  1 2

Restoring private keys

The participant uses the shared by secret
private key of the secret distributors 366.6 379.8
distributor, the encrypted n 5
key calculated by himself

According to the above

n 7 365.2 420.7
The participant encrypts calculation results, the
the random number r privacy of the participants
using the encryption is reconstructed by
secret key described interpolation polynomials.
above 367.4 457.6
n 9
A one-way hash
Each participant uses the
operation based on the
above encryption secret
above results n 11 369.2 570.5
key to encrypt the random
number
Construction of
polynomial of order n by
Lagrange interpolation 368.3 685.4
method T participants calculate the n 13
encryption key using their
own private key, the
Distribute hash and identity of the distributor,
polynomial results to and the public key
When the number of secret distributors n is
participants signature, respectively
determined, the request time of private key increases
significantly with the increase of threshold t, but
End
when the threshold value t is given, the number of
start
distributors n has little effect on the request time of
private key. Therefore, according to the different
Fig 2 Private key sharing and refactoring application requirements of the energy Internet,
combined with the security and operational
In order to prevent the loss of private key, the efficiency of the application needs, the appropriate
secret sharing mechanism can be used to protect the threshold value can be selected.
private key. In the (tn) scheme shown in fig. 2, the
private key of a node is divided into n parts and ˅Privacy leaks. Currently, the transaction data
stored by n participants. Only when t and more than t
transmitted and stored on the block chain is open and
participants work together can the private key be
reconstructed. In the process of secret sharing, each transparent. Bitcoin only protects the identity
participant uses his identity to identify his own information of both parties by separating the
private key share, and uses his own private key as relationship between the address and the real identity
secret share, which can distribute secret share at the of the address holder, which is known as pseudo
same time without any prior processing. In the anonymity. However, the relationship between the
process of private key reconstruction, in order to account and the transaction can still be found
prevent each participant from cheating each other, through the information such as address ID, IP
any participant can verify the validity of the share address and so on. For the energy internet, which
submitted by the participant, and the real secret share involves a large number of energy subsystems
is not needed in the reconfiguration. There is no need trading user privacy, the disclosure of data clearly

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 does not meet regulatory requirements, especially
since sensitive data need to balance privacy
protection with compliance. On the one hand, it is
necessary to protect the privacy of all the
participants in the energy Internet in the block chain,
on the other hand, to prevent the illegal participants
from using them to carry out illegal transactions.
In order to strengthen the privacy protection of the
participants, the following countermeasures can be
adopted: first, the certification agency acts as the
agent to deal with the participants, thus avoiding the
privacy of the participants and the leakage of
important information. The other is to limit the
broadcast range of transaction data and limit the
transmission of transaction data between some key
nodes. The third is to set up the corresponding access
control mechanism to control the reading and writing
of data information. Fourth, the use of ring signature,
homomorphic encryption, zero knowledge proof and
other technologies to avoid privacy exposure.
3˅A protocol attack. No matter what kind of
consensus mechanism is used in block chain, it is
faced with the problem of protocol attack to some
extent. Energy industry has a strong monopoly, some
interest groups may have more than some consensus
mechanism fault-tolerant ability, so that the power
transaction block chain is facing a severe security
threat. In addition, when the protocol of the block
chain needs to be updated, some nodes can not get
the new version or can not get the new version in
time, which leads to the inconsistent version of the
protocol running by different nodes, which leads to
the problem of hard bifurcation and soft bifurcation.
Hard bifurcation means that the node running the
new protocol is determined to be a valid block,
which will be ruled invalid by the node running the
old protocol, resulting in a permanent split; the soft
bifurcation means that the existing verification rules
of the instruction are more stringent. The old node
that has not updated the protocol version produces
some invalid blocks or transactions, and the node
running the new version of the protocol can also
verify the passed block by the old node to accept, so
that the old node to actively update the protocol, In
this case, at most, some temporary small forks are
produced.
Figure 3 shows a comparison between the hard
bifurcation and the soft bifurcation when the
protocol version is updated by the node with 60%
computational power ratio based on the PoW
mechanism.
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block block block block block
New protocol
block
60%computational powe
(a) hard branches
block block block block block
Old protocol
block
40%computational powe
˄b˅ soft bifurcation
Fig3 diagram
Therefore, on the one hand, we should combine
consensus mechanism with practical supervision,
such as joint control by means of asset mortgage,
legal supervision and so on, so as to strictly check
the access of all participants in the energy Internet.
On the other hand, when updating the consensus
mechanism of block chain, hard bifurcation should
be avoided and soft bifurcation should be used as far
as possible.
III. CONCLUSION
The research of block chain technology in energy
Internet is in the ascendant. Combining the
transaction link of energy Internet with block chain
technology can effectively solve the transaction
friction, maintain the order of the market and
guarantee the legitimacy of the transaction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the technical project
of state grid corporation of ChinaĀResearch on the
Framework and key supporting Technology of
Electric Power transaction Cloud platformā.
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on typical applications [J]. Proceedings of the
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congestion Management based on Block chain in Energy
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Author’s brief introduction and contact information:
732
 Author’s brief introduction and contact information:

Name: XiPeiyu
Setting: Beijing Kedong Electric Power Control System Co.,
Ltd
Tel: 010-58687743
Email: xlc_2011@126.com
Address: No. 8, Shangdi West Road, Beijing

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