Techniques, Taxonomy, and Challenges of Privacy Protection in the Smart Grid

Abstract

As the ease with which any data are collected and transmitted increases, more privacy concerns arise leading to an increasing need to protect and preserve it. Much of the recent high-profile coverage of data mishandling and public misleadings about various aspects of privacy exasperates the severity. The Smart Grid (SG) is no exception with its key characteristics aimed at supporting bi-directional information flow between the consumer of electricity and the utility provider. What makes the SG privacy even more challenging and intriguing is the fact that the very success of the initiative depends on the expanded data generation, sharing, and processing. In particular, the deployment of smart meters whereby energy consumption information can easily be collected leads to major public hesitations about the technology. Thus, to successfully transition from the traditional Power Grid to the SG of the future, public concerns about their privacy must be explicitly addressed and fears must be allayed. Along these lines, this chapter introduces some of the privacy issues and problems in the domain of the SG, develops a unique taxonomy of some of the recently proposed privacy protecting solutions as well as some if the future privacy challenges that must be addressed in the future.