An Overview of Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation in Smart Metering Systems

Growing energy needs forces governments to look for alternative resources and ways of better energy grid management and load balancing. As a major initiative, many countries including the UK, the USA and China have already started deploying smart grids. One of the biggest advantages of smart grids compared to traditional energy grids is the ability to remotely read fine-granular measurements from each smart meter, which enables the grid operators to balance load efficiently and offer adapted time-dependent tariffs. However, collecting fine-granular data also poses a serious privacy threat for the citizens as illustrated by the decision of the Dutch Parliament in 2009 that rejects the deployment of smart meters due to privacy considerations. Hence, it is a must to enforce privacy rights without disrupting the smart grid services, like billing and data aggregation. Secure Signal Processing aims at protecting the sensitive data by means of encryption and provides tools to process them under encryption, effectively addressing the smart metering privacy problem. In this paper we present recent and ongoing research in the field of privacy protection for smart grids, where individual smart meter measurements are kept secret from outsiders, including the utility provider itself, while processing private measurements under encryption is still feasible. We focus particularly on data aggregation, which demonstrates the major research challenges in privacy protection for smart grids.