Smart Meter Security and Privacy: A Comparative UK Regulations Project

This project undertakes a comparative study of smart meter regulations in the UK, focusing on their impact on consumer privacy and data security. It explores the background of smart grid technology, highlighting the benefits of smart meters and the integration of renewable energy sources. The research delves into the privacy and security concerns associated with smart meters, referencing relevant EU directives and exploring research questions related to data disclosure and aggregation periods. The project aims to understand the regulations imposed on the usage of smart meters, ensuring safe data transfer and promoting effective energy usage while enhancing user privacy. The deliverables include a literature review, survey forms, methodology, rules and regulations comparison, and a final result. The research also identifies the key issues related to data privacy in social media platforms, including data breaches and misuse of personal information, and the lack of user awareness regarding data sharing.

Background:
Grid management is the combination of smart meters with the automated substations that
simplifies the process. The data promoting the voltage, current and frequency values are all
offered to the DSO by the smart meters that requires only minimum voltage grid and the
substations involves in the combination of several sensors, which requires medium voltage grids.
In order to maintain the electricity grids within their operating range, these data could be used to
make the automated decisions. Another great advantage of smart grid system is that the
integration of renewable resources such as wind turbines and the solar panels is highly possible.
Small-scale distributed renewable energy resources could be directly connected with the grid,
whereas the conventional electricity grids are connected with the transmission grids. Therefore,
only minimum adjustments are required by the renewable resources in the large-scale
development in the grid management. According to the Paris agreement target, it is necessary to
enhance the renewable energy resources by demanding the achievement of global emission peak
thereby taking actions to reduce the carbon emission as soon possible. The following strategies
are to be achieved by Energy Strategy of the EU by the year 2030:
 The reduction of the level of greenhouse gases by 40%, when compared to the year 1990
 Usage of renewable resources at least at the rate of 27%
Currently, the usage of renewable energy resources is limited to the usage of 10% at Belgium
and 17% at EU, thereby limiting the usage to 20% globally. Altogether, the power consumption
at Belgium by renewable energy resources is almost 26% and at EU it is almost 30% totally.
Moreover, the privacy and the security concern the development of the smart grid
technology. Several security and privacy issues had been dealt in several research papers. In the
present scenario, smart meters had bloomed world-wide and are widely used at the European
countries. According to EU directive 2009/72/EC, the union encourages the installation of SMs.
Based on their statement: "By the year 2020, at least 80% of the customers tend to roll-out the
smart meters positively". Certain countries like Lithuania, Belgium, Iceland, Portugal, and the
Czech Republic have considered not rolling out SMs by 2020.
Deliverables:
The research study consists of the following list of deliverables:
 Literature Review
 Survey Forms
 Methodology
 Rules and Regulations
 Comparison Result

Academic Objectives:
 To understand the use of the smart meters and also their major benefits
 To have a thorough knowledge regarding the privacy and security issues concerning
smart meters
 To have a detailed report on the usage of smart meters around UK
 To gain knowledge regarding the regulations imposed on the usage of smart meters.
Research Questions:
The following are the research questions:
 If the UK user chooses to disclose the daily aggregates with the half-hourly consumption
values or the monthly utility aggregate then the question arises regarding, how the choice
made by a single individual user for disclosing their monthly aggregates affects the
privacy of that consumer?
 Considering the utilities obtaining only the collective data of the house-hold per half-
hourly period and does not obtain the user half-yearly consumed data, then at certain
boundary condition, is it possible to obtain the half-yearly consumed data of an
individual?
 Whether the aggregation period could be one month or else it could be two week at a
minimum possibility, considering the privacy point of view?
Research Objectives:
 To have a safe data transfer to the Meter Responsible Party (MRP) thereby concerning
the privacy of the user
 To notify the user regarding their regular consumption of data in their household thereby
promoting the effective usage of energy
 To promote the resources for the enhancing the privacy point of view
Resource Required:
The following are the resources required for the research:
 Basic amenities
 Money for conducting survey
 Time
 Google Forms
Risk Assessment:
 Mismatch among the excepted and the actual outcome
 Lack of time and budget
 Wrong data analysis