ABSTRACT: The introduction of so-called smart meters involves detailed consumption data. While this data plays a key role in integrating volatile renewable energy sources, a side effect is that it can reveal sensitive personal information. Concerns and protests led to a stopped smart meter rollout yet. In deregulated electricity markets, data-privacy is even more at risk: The UK, Texas and Ontario decided for a nation-wide communication intermediary in order to facilitate the exchange of the vast amount of smart meter data. However, this operational efficiency is achieved by the fact that an intermediary is a single point of failure. In this talk, an approach is presented based on encryption to secure the intermediary against privacy invasions. It is shown that the prototypical implementation meets even restrictive requirements for large-scale data handling and processing. By aiming at customers’ confidence in smart metering, the solution might lay the ground for an ecosystem of energy services.

SPEAKER: Jens Strüker currently leads the research group Internet of Energy at the Telematics Department of the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg. His research focuses on economic benefits, data privacy and adoption of using so-called smart objects at the business process level in the field of logistics, sustainability management and smart electricity grids. These physical objects, equipped with a special-purpose computer system, are able to sense information from their environment or perform actions affecting it and digitally communicate with other networked computer systems. In May 2012, Jens received his post-doctoral qualification (Habilitation) for Business Administration and Information Systems from the University of Freiburg and he is among others responsible for lecture Energy Informatics for Master students.