SePEnTra: A secure and privacy-preserving energy trading mechanisms in transactive energy market

Abstract: In this paper, we design and present a novel model called SePEnTra to ensure the security and privacy of energy data while sharing with other entities during energy trading to determine optimal price signals. Furthermore, the market operator can use this data to detect malicious activities of users in the later stage without violating privacy (e.g., deviation of actual energy generation/consumption from forecast beyond a threshold). We use two cryptographic primitives, additive secret sharing and Pedersen commitment, in SePEnTra. The performance of our model is evaluated theoretically and numerically. We compare the performance of SePEnTra with the same Transactive energy market (TEM) framework without security mechanisms. The result shows that even though using advanced cryptographic primitives in a large market framework, SePEnTra has very low computational complexity and communication overhead. Moreover, it is storage efficient for all parties.