Abstract

Smart metering systems provide high resolution, realtime end user power consumption data for utilities to better monitor and control the system, and for end users to better manage their energy usage and bills. However, the high resolution realtime power consumption data can also be used to extract end user activity details, which could pose a great threat to user privacy. In this work, we propose a secure multi-party computation (SMC) based privacy preserving protocol for smart meter based load management. Using SMC and a proper designed electricity plan, the utility is able to perform real time demand management with individual users, without knowing the actual value of each user's consumption data. Using homomorphic encryption, the billing is secure and verifiable. We have further implemented a demonstration system which includes a graphical user interface and simulates network communication. The demonstration shows that the proposed privacy preserving protocol is feasible for implementation on commodity IT systems.

Highlights

  • A smart meter is an energy meter that measures end user power consumption and communicates the information back to utility for monitoring and billing purposes

  • Our proposed smart meter load management scheme is built upon several different but related concepts from cryptography, which we review

  • Secure multi-party computation (SMC) is a cryptographic problem in which multiple parties jointly compute a value based on individually held private data, without sharing the data

Read more

Summary

INTRODUCTION

A smart meter is an energy meter (mostly an electric meter) that measures end user power consumption and communicates the information back to utility for monitoring and billing purposes. The end users could use the smart meter data to better manage their energy usage and reduce the energy bills. In order to fully enable the advantage of smart metering system and address its privacy concern, we believe an ideal privacy preserving smart meter framework should meet the following requirements: 1) fully protect the end user’s privacy, 2) without sacrificing the resolution of smart meter data for actual load management usage, and 3) provide a verifiable billing method, 4) without using a trusted third party. By using SMC with homomorphic encryption properties, we design a smart meter based load management and billing framework that achieves all the above requirements.

BACKGROUND
Homomorphic Encryption and SMC
Public Key Encryption
Secure Multiparty Computation
SMC Framework
SMC Primitives
SMC Based Demand Management
Discussion
Billing and Verification
IMPLEMENTATION
Network Topology
Simulation
Hardware and Software Infrastructure
CONCLUSION
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call