Secure Power Quality Metering via SCION

With the ongoing decentralization of the power grid, real-time monitoring of power quality is becoming increasingly important. Power quality metrics include voltage levels, grid frequency, frequency spectrum and harmonics. The relevant measurement data is generated by Power Quality Meters at critical points in the grid, such as substations. To aggregate this data promptly and reliably at central locations, SCION — the technological basis of the Secure Swiss Utility Network (SSUN) — offers a suitable network technology. SCION lets end devices switch quickly between network paths when a path fails, and it allows servers to be shielded from unauthorized traffic at the network layer rather than at the application layer. Current PQ meters, however, cannot be connected to a SCION network directly, and adapting each device type individually would not scale across the installed base. Using a concrete PQ meter as a motivating example, the goal of this challenge is to develop a prototype of a DIN rail-mounted hardware module that acts as an interface between field devices — such as PQ meters — and the SCION network. What we build: a gateway component on a Raspberry Pi 5 platform that lets PQ meters push their data to a backend hosted in a SCION network.

Demo setup: the demonstration consists of an actual PQ meter, the platform implementing the SCION gateway, and a laptop running PocketSCION, a SCION network simulator that is part of the official SCION SDK. The PQ meter connects to the gateway over Ethernet. The gateway connects via (W)LAN to the SNAP interface of PocketSCION — SNAP (SCION Network Access Point) being the service interface endhosts use to attach to a SCION network.