Plug-in privacy for Smart Metering billing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a privacy-preserving protocol for Smart Meter billing that enables time-of-use tariffs without revealing detailed consumption data, using zero-knowledge proofs and Pedersen Commitments.

Contribution

It presents a novel zero-knowledge proof-based protocol that preserves consumer privacy in Smart Meter billing without hardware modifications.

Findings

Protocol maintains privacy of consumption data

Prototype implementation shows practical performance

No changes needed to existing Smart Meter hardware

Abstract

Traditional electricity meters are replaced by Smart Meters in customers' households. Smart Meters collects fine-grained utility consumption profiles from customers, which in turn enables the introduction of dynamic, time-of-use tariffs. However, the fine-grained usage data that is compiled in this process also allows to infer the inhabitant's personal schedules and habits. We propose a privacy-preserving protocol that enables billing with time-of-use tariffs without disclosing the actual consumption profile to the supplier. Our approach relies on a zero-knowledge proof based on Pedersen Commitments performed by a plug-in privacy component that is put into the communication link between Smart Meter and supplier's back-end system. We require no changes to the Smart Meter hardware and only small changes to the software of Smart Meter and back-end system. In this paper we describe the functional and privacy requirements, the specification and security proof of our solution and give a performance evaluation of a prototypical implementation.