Data handling in the smart grid: do we know enough?

Data privacy in the smart grid is an important requirement for consumers. Central to the data privacy issue is the handling of energy-usage data, in particular data retention, aggregation, and anonymization. Government and industry groups have formulated various policies in this area, mostly based on the Fair Information Practice principles. In this position paper, we argue that the existing policy-level work is insufficient scientific work is needed to fully implement such policies. We propose here a research agenda in order to appropriately balance the advantages of fine-grained energy-usage data with the associated privacy risks. For comparison, we also describe analogous policies, and their implementation, in areas such as telecommunications data, Internet web behavior, and medical data.

Citation

Chow, R.; Cardenas-Mora, A.; De Cristofaro, E. Data handling in the smart grid: do we know enough? Seventh Annual IFIP Working Group 11.10 International Conference on Critical Infrastructure Protection; 2013 March 18-20; Washington, DC.