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Smart Grid and Privacy Concerns

Is it really a tradeoff between saving energy and losing privacy?

Smart grid is a system that enables suppliers to provide electricity to consumers using the latest digital technologies. It enables cost and energy savings by monitoring the flow of electricity across the entire network. Smart grid uses a two-way communication system between the supplier and consumer with control devices at various locations that enable the grid to monitor the consumption and respond to changes in a better manner.

One of the earliest smart grids was installed by a large power company in Italy, Enel S.p.A. Completed in 2005, the telegestore project reportedly cost 2.1 billion euros and has resulted in annual savings of more than 500 million euros.

In the United States, the city of Austin, Texas worked on implementing a smart grid in 2003. Austin's smart metering project covered 500,000 devices, 100 terra bytes of data, 1 million consumers and 43,000 businesses.

This article discusses the advantages and privacy concerns of a smart grid and a few of the ways in which the concerns can be mitigated.

Smart Grid Advantages

  • Improve power quality and reduce power outages: United States loses around $80 billion a year due to power outages. These losses could be significantly reduced by using a smart grid that can reduce peak consumption by moving certain activities to off-peak hours.
  • Eliminate dependence on consumers for savings: Since smart grids can automatically sense when devices are not being used, they eliminate the need for consumers to remember to turn off devices in order to save electricity.
  • Enable cost savings and reduce peak hour loads: By varying the cost of electricity between peak and non-peak hours, customers are encouraged to move unimportant tasks to non-peak hours, which can reduce peak load and also result in cost savings for consumers.
  • Improve environment friendliness by lowering emissions: By automatically turning off systems when they are not in use, a smart grid can reduce electricity waste and bring down carbon emissions.
  • Improve safety by reducing hazards and promoting a safer system for working population and general public: Since a smart grid can automatically turn off devices and provide the correct level of power, devices are less likely to burn out or malfunction so people are safer when operating the devices.
  • Benefit from renewable energy resources: Whenever wind and solar power is generated, the smart grid can reduce generation from non-renewable sources of energy, thereby effectively utilizing the renewable resources.

Smart Grid Privacy Concerns

As it is seen from the above advantages, smart grids help in reducing costs, reducing carbon emissions, improving safety and reliability. But smart grids also result in some privacy concerns.

Detailed information regarding the usage pattern of several appliances can be obtained in a smart grid. Additionally, the activities and number of people residing at a place can be predicted, to a certain extent, based on the usage patterns.

There is risk that consumers would be vulnerable to criminal activity, biases and unnecessary embarrassment based on their energy use information. Furthermore, most of the devices on a smart grid are connected to the Internet to communicate information, and without adequate built-in security, the data could be obtained easily by any hacker with minimal effort.

Potential Solutions

Some of the privacy concerns in smart grid can be addressed with sound solutions. A smart grid operator could limit the amount and type of information collected from a consumer. This would reduce the amount of data that could potentially be exposed. Furthermore, the smart grid operator could commit to follow privacy guidelines and standards.

Technological solutions could also be developed. A new device could be implemented to control all the appliances at home. It would hide the actual appliances that request the data and only transmit the amount of power consumed. Alternatively, a trusted third party could help to maintain anonymity by providing the usage data while hiding the actual usage details from the supplier.

Conclusion

There are solutions available to address the privacy concerns mentioned above. Not all solutions may be foolproof or economically viable; however the advantages and cost savings that result from using a smart grid are numerous. As technology develops, cheaper and better solutions for addressing privacy concerns may be possible. Smart grid is a very useful technology with many advantages that could outweigh the privacy concerns.

References

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