Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand

With the development and introduction of smart metering, the energy information for costumers will change from infrequent manual meter readings to fine-grained energy consumption data. On the one hand these fine-grained measurements will lead to an improvement in costumers' energy habits, but on the other hand the fined-grained data produces information about a household and also households' inhabitants, which are the basis for many future privacy issues. To ensure household privacy and smart meter information owned by the household inhabitants, load hiding techniques were introduced to obfuscate the load demand visible at the household energy meter. In this work, a state-of-the-art battery-based load hiding (BLH) technique, which uses a controllable battery to disguise the power consumption and a novel load hiding technique called load-based load hiding (LLH) are presented. An LLH system uses an controllable household appliance to obfuscate the household's power demand. We evaluate and compare both load hiding techniques on real household data and show that both techniques can strengthen household privacy but only LLH can increase appliance level privacy

Differentially Private State Estimation in Distribution Networks with Smart Meters

State estimation is routinely being performed in high-voltage power transmission grids in order to assist in operation and to detect faulty equipment. In low- and medium-voltage power distribution grids, on the other hand, few real-time measurements are traditionally available, and operation is often conducted based on predicted and historical data. Today, in many parts of the world, smart meters have been deployed at many customers, and their measurements could in principle be shared with the operators in real time to enable improved state estimation. However, customers may feel reluctance in doing so due to privacy concerns. We therefore propose state estimation schemes for a distribution grid model, which ensure differential privacy to the customers. In particular, the state estimation schemes optimize different performance criteria, and a trade-off between a lower bound on the estimation performance versus the customers' differential privacy is derived. The proposed framework is general enough to be applicable also to other distribution networks, such as water and gas networks

Survey in Smart Grid and Smart Home Security: Issues, Challenges and Countermeasures

The electricity industry is now at the verge of a new era. An era that promises, through the evolution of the existing electrical grids to Smart Grids, more efficient and effective power management, better reliability, reduced production costs and more environmentally friendly energy generation. Numerous initiatives across the globe, led by both industry and academia, reflect the mounting interest around the enormous benefits but also the great risks introduced by this evolution. This paper focuses on issues related to the security of the Smart Grid and the Smart Home, which we present as an integral part of the Smart Grid. Based on several scenarios we aim to present some of the most representative threats to the Smart Home / Smart Grid environment. The threats detected are categorized according to specific security goals set for the Smart Home/Smart Grid environment and their impact on the overall system security is evaluated. A review of contemporary literature is then conducted with the aim of presenting promising security countermeasures with respect to the identified specific security goals for each presented scenario. An effort to shed light on open issues and future research directions concludes the paper

A Device Interconnection System for Energy Management

Mit Energiemanagementlösungen lassen sich wertvolle Beiträge zur Erhöhung der Energieeffizienz erzielen. Geeignete Lösungen können eine Reduzierung des Ausstoßes an Treibhausgasen bewirken sowie zu einer Reduzierung der Energiekosten für die Bürgerinnen und Bürger beitragen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden die wesentlichen Bestandteile von Energiemanagementsystemen und deren Einsatzfähigkeit in verteilten Systemen genauer betrachtet. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass viele bisherige Energiemanagementsysteme Beschränkungen in ihrer Einsatzfähigkeit unterliegen. Aus diesem Grund wird ein Systemkonzept für zukünftige Energiemanagementsysteme auf Basis des Internet der Dinge (Internet of Things, IoT) nach einem allgemeinen, Nutzer-zentrierten Ansatz entwickelt. Das Systemkonzept besteht erstens aus Verfahren zur Geräteeinbindung möglichst alle Arten von Anlagen, Maschinen und Geräten, zweitens aus einer datenschutz- und datensicherheitskonformen hierarchischen Kommunikationsstruktur sowie drittens aus verschiedenen modularen Energiemanagement-Funktionalitäten. Für die Erprobung des Systemkonzepts wurde u.a. eine Softwareplattform in der Skriptsprache JavaScript zur Ausführung von verteilten Energiemanagement-Anwendungen implementiert. Verschiedene Techniken zur Geräteeinbindung sowie Energiemanagement-Funktionalitäten wurden als Anwendungen dieser Softwareplattform umgesetzt. Dazu zählen eine Energieverbrauchsschätzung für Computer, mehrere Techniken zur Identifikation des Gerätebetriebsstatus anhand von Messdaten, einige Smartphone- bzw. Tablet-Anwendungen für die Nutzer-unterstützte Energieverbrauchsoptimierung sowie Anwendungen zur automatisierten Energieverbrauchsoptimierung inklusive einer Lastspitzenreduktion. Zur Demonstration der Funktionsfähigkeit wurde das System in Unternehmen und Privathaushalten eingesetzt. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass die bisherigen Beschränkungen der Einsatzfähigkeit von Energiemanagementsystemen überwunden werden und ein großflächiger Einsatz technisch möglich ist. Weiterhin werden die verschiedenen Komponenten und Verfahren einzeln evaluiert. Die gewählte hierarchische Kommunikationsstruktur bestätigt sich dabei als geeignetes Konzept, das zudem weitere Vorteile hinsichtlich der Skalierungsfähigkeit und der Ausfallsicherheit bietet. Zusätzlich wird gezeigt, dass die verschiedenen Techniken und Funktionalitäten aufgrund ihrer Präzision und aufgrund ihrer gezeigten Realisierbarkeit angemessene Lösungen für das Energiemanagement darstellen.In view of the energy transition in Germany, potential power savings are achieved through the application of energy management solutions. Using appropriate concepts, energy management systems can contribute to the reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases and reduce the energy costs for end consumers. In this thesis, the different components of energy management systems are studied and their applicability in distributed systems is analyzed. It is shown that a majority of energy management systems suffer from limitations in their operational capabilities. For this reason, a user oriented system concept for future energy management systems based on the Internet of Things (IoT) is developed. The system is composed of three layers, the lowest of which addresses the methods for the integration of all types of machines and devices. For the middle layer a hierarchical communication structure with distributed applications is suggested, to satisfy privacy and data security requirements. In the top layer, different energy management functionalities are outlined. For the testing of the system concept, a software platform for distributed applications was realized in JavaScript. Several device connectivity techniques as well as energy management functionalities are implemented as applications of this software platform, such as an energy consumption estimation for computers, several device status identification techniques based on measured data, several smartphone and tablet applications for the end-user based energy consumption optimization as well as some applications for the automated energy consumption optimization, including a peak consumption reduction. To demonstrate the functionality of the system, it was used in both work and home environments. Thereby it is demonstrated that the restrictions in the operational capability of energy management systems could be overcome and that a wide deployment of these systems is possible from a technical point of view. Furthermore, the different components and processes are individually evaluated, whereby the chosen hierarchal communication structure is proven to be a practical concept, offering advantages in scaling and reliability. It is shown that the different techniques and functionalities offer a capable energy management solution, as a result of their precision and demonstrated feasibility