The world is facing an urgent need to provide secure
communication and data access control in advanced metering
infrastructure (AMI) because conventional cryptographic key management
and authentication protocols are at stake. The cryptography schemes
entirely rely on trusted third parties (TTPs), leading to a single point
of failure and increasing network overhead. In response to this
inefficiency and security compromise, this study proposes a
blockchain-enabled distributed AMI secure communication scheme. In the
proposed work, smart contract (SC), an integrated part of the
blockchain, is programmed to substitute traditional TTP-based
transaction systems, which operate in a distributed, immutable, and
trustworthy manner. In this paper, we implemented practical Byzantine
fault tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithm and Hyperledger Fabric (HLF)
blockchain platform to ensure Byzantine fault tolerance in the
blockchain transaction. Performance analysis shows that the proposed
BC-AMI scheme has the advantage of incurring the least amount of
communication and time costs compared with similar studies while
ensuring security against some common cyber-attacks.