Secure Three-Factor User Authentication Scheme for Renewable-Energy-Based Smart Grid Environment

Smart grid (SG) technology has recently received significant attention due to its usage in maintaining demand response management in power transmission systems. In SG, charging of electric vehicles becomes one of the emerging applications. However, authentication between a vehicle user and a smart meter is required so that both of them can securely communicate for managing demand response during peak hours. To address the above mentioned issues, in this paper, we propose a new efficient three-factor user authentication scheme for a renewable energy-based smart grid environment (TUAS-RESG), which uses the lightweight cryptographic computations such as one-way hash functions, bitwise XOR operations, and elliptic curve cryptography. The detailed security analysis shows the robustness of TUAS-RESG against various well-known attacks. Moreover, TUAS-RESG provides superior security with additional features, such as dynamic smart meter addition, flexibility for password and biometric update, user and smart meter anonymity, and untraceability as compared to other related existing schemes. The practical demonstration of TUAS-RESG is also proved using the widely accepted NS2 simulation.