Blockchain-empowered security and privacy protection technologies for smart grid

With the rapid development in society of the economy and of computational technologies, it is particularly important to build a secure, efficient and reliable smart grid architecture to provide users with high-quality electricity services. However, data collection and energy trading in public networks creates security and privacy challenges in smart grids. Blockchain technologies have the excellent characteristics of decentralization, immutability and traceability, which can resolve the security, integration and coordination problems faced by the traditional centralized networks for smart grids. The goal of this paper is to introduce and compare blockchain-based technologies in addressing the problems of privacy protection, identity authentication, data aggregation and electricity pricing for the data collection and power energy trading processes in smart grids. In addition, the existing challenges and future research directions of smart grids are discussed. •Review the application of blockchain technology in the field of smart grid.•Compare and analyze the security, privacy and performance of these applications.•Emphasize the benefits of combining blockchain technology with cryptography.•Propose suggestions for future research directions.