Smart Meter Privacy via Pseudonym Credentials
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional electricity meters lack the granularity to accurately measure and anticipate consumption patterns, making it difficult for retailers to manage demand and incentivize consumers to shift usage, while smart meters introduce privacy and security risks due to fine-grained data collection.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a smart meter system with a security device, such as a smart card, that uses pseudonyms and privacy-preserving credentials to anonymize usage reporting, ensuring consumer privacy and secure data transmission, and enabling detailed energy usage analysis without revealing consumer identities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If smart meters collect fine-grained energy usage information, then demand management and consumer incentivization improve, but consumer privacy and security are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism (privacy-preserving credential system with pseudonyms) between the smart meter data collection and the retail electricity provider analysis. This intermediary allows energy usage data to be reported and analyzed without directly exposing consumer identity information, thus resolving the contradiction between measurement precision and privacy protection
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and separates the consumer identity information from the energy usage data. By using pseudonyms and privacy-preserving credentials, the system extracts only the necessary energy consumption patterns while leaving out personally identifiable information, thereby maintaining measurement precision without compromising privacy
2Object-affected harmful factors
If traditional meters only measure total power consumption, then consumer privacy is protected, but demand pattern analysis and incentivization capabilities are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the traditional mechanical metering system with a digital smart meter system that incorporates privacy-preserving credential verification. This substitution enables detailed energy usage measurement while using cryptographic pseudonyms to protect consumer identity, thus gaining consumption pattern information without sacrificing privacy
3Productivity
If retail electricity providers access detailed usage information, then billing and demand management improve, but fraud and malicious attacks increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-establishing privacy-preserving credentials and pseudonym systems before data transmission. This preliminary setup ensures that even when detailed usage information is transmitted for billing and demand management, the data is already protected against fraud and malicious attacks through cryptographic verification mechanisms
Data Source
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AI summary
Privacy-preserving smart metering for a smart grid. Issuing a privacy-enhanced credential to a consumer node having smart meter. Operating the consumer node to associate an id with the credential and to use the id to report usage. Other systems and methods are disclosed.