A Practical Searchable Symmetric Encryption Scheme for Smart Grid Data

Outsourcing data storage to the remote cloud can be an economical solution to enhance data management in the smart grid ecosystem. To protect the privacy of data, the utility company may choose to encrypt the data before uploading them to the cloud. However, while encryption provides confidentiality to data, it also sacrifices the data owners' ability to query a special segment in their data. Searchable symmetric encryption is a technology that enables users to store documents in ciphertext form while keeping the functionality to search keywords in the documents. However, most state-of-the-art SSE algorithms are only focusing on general document storage, which may become unsuitable for smart grid applications. In this paper, we propose a simple, practical SSE scheme that aims to protect the privacy of data generated in the smart grid. Our scheme achieves high space complexity with small information disclosure that was acceptable for practical smart grid application. We also implement a prototype over the statistical data of advanced meter infrastructure to show the effectiveness of our approach

Evaluation of PV technology implementation in the building sector

This paper presents a simulation case that shows the impact on energy consumption of a building applying photovoltaic shading systems. In order to make photovoltaic application more economical, the effect of a photovoltaic facade as a passive cooling system can result in a considerable energy cost reduction, with positive influence on the payback time of the photovoltaic installation. Photovoltaic shading systems can be applied to both refurbishment of old buildings and to new-build, offering attractive and environmentally integrated architectural solutions

Feasibility Study of OFDM-MFSK Modulation Scheme for Smart Metering Technology

The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing based M-ary Frequency Shift Keying (OFDM-MFSK) is a noncoherent modulation scheme which merges MFSK with the OFDM waveform. It is designed to improve the receiver sensitivity in the hard environments where channel estimation is very difficult to perform. In this paper, the OFDM-MFSK is suggested for the smart metering technology and its performance is measured and compared with the ordinary OFDM-BPSK. Our results show that, depending on the MFSK size value (M), the Packet Error Rate (PER) has dramatically improved for OFDM-MFSK. Additionally, the adaptive OFDM-MFSK, which selects the best M value that gives the minimum PER and higher throughput for each Smart Meter (SM), has better coverage than OFDM-BPSK. Although its throughput and capacity are lower than OFDMBPSK, the connected SMs per sector are higher. Based on the smart metering technology requirements which imply the need for high coverage and low amount of data exchanged between the network and the SMs, The OFDM-MFSK can be efficiently used in this technology.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, ISGT Europe 201

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Pricing Methods

In order to consider the range of pricing methods available, it is first necessary to choose a definition for road pricing. The term "road pricing" has been criticised as an inaccurate description of systems which is applied to (Thompson, 1990) and there is some inconsistency regarding the extent of charging policies which are considered to be included. A liberal definition could cover any fiscal form of traffic restraint, affecting the mode, time, route, destination of frequency of journeys. In this case road pricing already exists worldwide through taxes imposed upon the purchase and licensing of vehicles and through fuel taxation. The extension of conventional taxation arrangements has been used as part of road pricing strategies in both Hong Kong and Singapore (Dawson and Brown, 1985; LPAC, 1991). However, the essence of most road pricing work has been to replace and supplement these existing charges, which do not discriminate by time, location or amount of vehicle use, with charging structures which are directly related to these issues. For this reason the descriptions road-use pricing, congestion pricing and road user charging are sometimes preferred, and some recent texts have attempted to impose a narrower definition for road pricing, in which only charging systems relating directly to the time and distance travelled are included (CIT, 1992). For the purposes of this review it is best to retain the conventional term of road pricing and apply the broadest definition

Public sector pricing policies : a review of Bank policy and practice

Nearly a decade has passed since the Bank codified its position on cost recovery policies (OMS 2.25) for public sector projects. In a review of 13 sectors, the authors find that the Bank guidelines are followed fairly closely in seven sectors: coal, irrigation, oil/gas, power, roads, telecommunications, and water/sewerage. In the other six sectors the focus is heavily on either distributional (health, education, housing) or financial (fertilizer, ports, railways) concerns - with little attempt to incorporate economic pricing principles. Efficiency pricing is not irrelevant or impossible in these sectors, and - even if used only as a benchmark - could improve sector management and project selection and design.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform