Blockchain-Integrated Resilient Distributed Energy Resources Management System

Distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) is a supervision system managing distributed energy resources (DERs) in a distribution system. However, the centralized DERMS has a potential risk of a single point of failure posed by cyber-attacks (e.g., denial of service attacks and ransomware attacks). This will cause visibility and control losses of the DER system. In this paper, blockchain (BC) technology is leveraged to enhance the resilience of DERMS by recovering the operation of a DER system during the DERMS outage. The proposed BC system is a governance platform for the DER system proving security and resilient control services on behalf of the DERMS until the availability of the DERMS is recovered. The feasibility of the proposed BC-integrated DERMS system toward a resilient DER system is validated by using a cyber-physical co-simulation testbed.