Privacy-Preserving Electricity Trading for Connected Microgrids

Abstract

The electricity market is evolving from the traditional unidirectional model into a bidirectional one in which households also generate and sell energy. This new scenario requires technology able to manage the available energy and guarantee that all the participants pay or are paid appropriately. Unfortunately, fine-grained monitoring of energy production and consumption makes it possible to infer sensitive information about confidential aspects of people’s private life. In this paper, we propose a system designed for privacy-preserving electricity trading in a connected microgrid. The system guarantees that at the end of a billing period, the distribution system operator can compute the quantity to be charged or paid to each household while being unable to trace its consumption details.