Privacy-Aware Sampling for Residential Demand Response Programs∗

Deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMIs) brings numerous new privacy concerns. The governments and standard organizations are responding to these concerns by developing guidelines and policies for AMIs. In USA, the June 2011 smart grid policy framework report examines privacy issues [11]. In accordance with the Federal Fair Information Practice (FIP) principles, the report recommends that State and Federal regulators consider methods which ensure the protection of consumers’ detailed energy usage. Recent standardization guidelines (e.g., the NIST-IR 7628 [1]) and regulations by the state public utility commissions (e.g., California (Docket No. 08-12-009), Colorado (Docket No. 10R-799E)) refer to the key FIP principle of data minimization by stating that AMIs should only collect the data necessary for Smart Grid operations. Despite the fact the data minimization is acknowledged as a key requirement, the technical criteria on selection of sampling intervals in AMIs are notably absent. In this paper we approach the question of privacy-enabling design of smart meter sampling intervals for Demand-Response (DR) schemes as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) problem. In particular, we introduce the problem of choosing the optimal sampling intervals in AMIs subject to the performance constraints of DR schemes. Our goal is to draw attention to the trade-offs between the privacy-aware sampling and the desired properties of DR schemes modeled as closed-loop systems.