Student research opportunities
The Risks in Smart Meters
Project Code: CECS_771
This project is available at the following levels:
CS single semester, Engn4200, Honours, Summer Scholar, Masters, PhD
Supervisor:
Dr Roger ClarkeOutline:
Utilities providers, particular electricity-providers like ACTEW, are installing real-time metering facilities both in their backbone networks and in industrial, commercial and domestic premises. These have the potential to enable more efficient network management and hence reduced energy wastage.
But smart meters come with risks for consumers, and are causing some consumers considerable concern.
They involve surveillance of the activities of consumers, in real time, and the retention of data (nominally in order to enable comparison of current usage against prior usage patterns). Electrical usage patterns are capable of revealing a considerable amount of sensitive data about people, including occupied premises, premises that are currently unoccupied, empty premises, habitual behaviours, and even the use of individual devices. (For example, a ray-lamp and a lamp to help pot-plants grow faster might have very similar signatures).
This sensitive data is transmitted over networks, and gathered, stored, used and disclosed. Its initial use may be by organisations directly involved in energy supply, and perhaps only for purposes related to energy supply. The data is attractive, however, and will doubtless soon afterwards be applied to a range of other purposes, and passed to a range of other organisations.
Goals of this project
Project work could involve study of the alternative ways in which smart meters can be conceived, designed, implemented and used; security analyses, particularly from the perspective of consumers; experiments to establish the extent to which security and privacy concerns are justified; design of ways to achieve the benefits of smart meters without the downsides.
Background Literature
NIST (2010) 'Guidelines for Smart Grid Cyber Security: Vol. 2, Privacy and the Smart Grid' The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel – Cyber Security Working Group, NISTIR 7628, August 2010, at http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistir/ir7628/nistir-7628_vol2.pdf
EPIC (2009-) 'The Smart Grid and Privacy' Electronic Privacy Information Center, Washington DC, since June 2009, at http://epic.org/privacy/smartgrid/smartgrid.html/
IPCO (2009) 'SmartPrivacy for the Smart Grid: Embedding Privacy into the Design of Electricity Conservation', Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, November 2009, at http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/pbd-smartpriv-smartgrid.pdf
