Smart Meter Privacy with Renewable Energy and a Finite Capacity Battery

We address the smart meter (SM) privacy problem by considering the availability of a renewable energy source (RES) and a battery which can be exploited by a consumer to partially hide the consumption pattern from the utility provider (UP). Privacy is measured by the mutual information rate between the consumer's energy consumption and the renewable energy generation process, and the energy received from the grid, where the latter is known by the UP through the SM readings, and the former two are to be kept private. By expressing the information leakage as an additive quantity, we cast the problem as a stochastic control problem, and formulate the corresponding Bellman equations.Comment: To appear in IEEE SPAWC 201

Smart Meter Privacy with an Energy Harvesting Device and Instantaneous Power Constraints

A smart meter (SM) periodically measures end-user electricity consumption and reports it to a utility provider (UP). Despite the advantages of SMs, their use leads to serious concerns about consumer privacy. In this paper, SM privacy is studied by considering the presence of an energy harvesting device (EHD) as a means of masking the user's input load. The user can satisfy part or all of his/her energy needs from the EHD, and hence, less information can be leaked to the UP via the SM. The EHD is typically equipped with a rechargeable energy storage device, i.e., a battery, whose instantaneous energy content limits the user's capability in covering his/her energy usage. Privacy is measured by the information leaked about the user's real energy consumption when the UP observes the energy requested from the grid, which the SM reads and reports to the UP. The minimum information leakage rate is characterized as a computable information theoretic single-letter expression when the EHD battery capacity is either infinite or zero. Numerical results are presented for a discrete binary input load to illustrate the potential privacy gains from the existence of a storage device.Comment: To be published in IEEE ICC201

Privacy of smart meter systems with an alternative energy source

Smart meter (SM) measurements provide near realtime information on the electricity consumption of a user to the utility provider (UP). This data can be used to extract private information on the energy consumption patterns of the user. Assuming that the user has access to an alternative energy source (AES) in addition to the power grid, SM privacy problem is studied from an information theoretic perspective. The energy requirement of the user (input load) at each time instant can be satisfied either from the power grid (output load) or from the AES. It is assumed that the output load can be perfectly tracked by the UP, and the privacy is measured through the information leakage rate. For given average and peak power constraints on the AES, privacy-power function is defined, and its equivalence to the rate-distortion function with a difference distortion measure is shown. Focusing on continuous input loads, the privacy-power function is characterized when there is only peak power limitation on the AES, while the Shannon lower bound is provided for the general case. The bound is shown to be achievable for the exponential input distribution. © 2013 IEEE