Privacy-friendly aggregation for the smart-grid

Abstract

The widespread deployment of smart meters for the modernisation of the electricity distribution network, but also for gas and water consumption, has been associated with privacy concerns due to the potentially large number of measurements that reflect the consumers behaviour. In this paper, we present protocols that can be used to privately compute aggregate meter measurements over defined sets of meters, allowing for fraud and leakage detection as well as network management and further statistical processing of meter measurements, without revealing any additional information about the individual meter readings. Thus, most of the benefits of the Smart Grid can be achieved without revealing individual data. The feasibility of the protocols has been demonstrated with an implementation on current smart meters. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.