Can We Prevent Privacy Leakage from Smart Meters without Compromising Their Functionalities?

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Abstract: Smart meters and the associated communication infrastructure are an essential component of future smart grids. Smart meters allow consumers to track their energy usage and generation, allow utilities and network operators to monitor and control the grid more closely, and enable real-time pricing. However, smart meter readings can also reveal sensitive information about consumers’ habits and behaviours. The growing backlash against smart meters due to these privacy concerns is seen as a potential show stopper for this multi-billion-pound industry. In this talk we will present our recent results that exploit physical resources, such as storage and renewable energy generation devices, to filter the energy consumption profile of the consumer, in order to provide privacy without compromising smart meter functionalities. We study the fundamental trade-off between the minimum possible privacy leakage and the energy cost that can be achieved with finite-capacity storage and under average and peak constraints on the available power from renewable energy sources. We will present various measures of privacy considered in the literature, comment on their advantages and limitations, and provide simulation results based on real smart meter data.