Climate change and environmental concerns are instigating widespread changes in modern electricity sectors due to energy policy initiatives and advances in sustainable technologies. To raise awareness of sustainable energy usage and capitalize on advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), a novel deep learning non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) model is proposed to disaggregate smart meter readings and identify the operation of individual appliances. This model can be used by Electric power utility (EPU) companies and third party entities, and then utilized to perform active or passive consumer power demand management. Although machine learning (ML) algorithms are powerful, these remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks. In this thesis, a novel stealthy black-box attack that targets NILM models is proposed. This work sheds light on both effectiveness and vulnerabilities of ML models in the smart grid context and provides valuable insights for maintaining security especially with increasing proliferation of artificial intelligence in the power system
