MQTT-based Infrastructure for Distributed Secure Energy Communities

This thesis addresses the design of a secure-by-design framework for energy communities, with a particular emphasis on communication and the components needed to ensure its security. The highly interconnected nature of this ecosystem, combined with the criticality of the infrastructure involved, necessitated the development of a communication model capable of meeting performance and environmental constraints, while also addressing fundamental security and safety requirements. Renewable Energy Communities are innovative and participatory models for local production, sharing and consumption of renewable energy. Their objective consists in delivering environmental, economic and social value together with the generation of clean energy. The work starts from the IEC 62443-Based Framework for the RECs to analyze the message brokers and the MQTT protocol, highlighting their main characteristics, strengths and vulnerabilities, defining the technological context within which the research is situated. The core of the thesis focuses on the design of the components, functionalities and requirements deployed in the Energy Management System (EMS) platform and in members premises. In this phase, the high-level requirements defined by the reference framework are mapped onto the characteristics of the MQTT protocol and its implementations, integrating aspects related to communication architecture and the security of exchanged data. Alongside the theoretical development, a simulator prototype was developed to verify the validity and applicability of the proposed solutions through testing on a selection of specific brokers and real-world device abstractions. In conclusion, the MQTT protocol and its implementations satisfy the various security and operational requirements. The outcome of the work is an MQTT-based architecture capable of carrying the communication across the various components of the REC. The simulations performed on the prototype have confirmed the theoretical framework.