Security Enhancement in Smart Distribution Grid with Light-Weight Dynamic Key Encryption

847-851Amalgamation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with traditional grid in an advent of smart grid poses severe threat to the power grid infrastructure as well as consumer privacy. Existing security measures are not adequate to avert infringement of attackers into wireless smart distribution grid communication network. In this paper, the concept of time-variant key generation along with light-weight encryption and device verification technique have been proposed to hide personal power consumption data from the adversary. The adversary has been constrained to fascinate or alter the data by realizing physical identity verification method. The time variant key is generated by hashing Time Stamp (TS) taken from the synchronized clock. An experimental smart distribution grid has been setup with ZigBee communication device to validate and comprehend the consequences of implementing time-variant key along with additional measures to enhance the security and reliability of the power grid. The experimental analysis revealed that the adversary will not be able to communicate to any smart home individually or to data concentrator with unregistered ZigBee device. Eavesdropping will not divulge the data since the key is time-variant in nature