Security and smart metering

The ‘smart grid’ is an upgrade of the existing 20th century electrical power grid, promoted to address the pressing issues of end-user energy monitoring, global warming, distributed power generation and emergency response. Smart grids are quickly spawning in Australia, Europe and North America. Security in smart grids is imperative to protect the functionality of their underlying networks, the data they communicate and the privacy of their customers. However, few research efforts have focussed on security in this area and solutions adopted from traditional ad-hoc networks are not suitable, as they would need to be fully integrated with the grid and its legacy systems before they can yield positive results. The purpose of this paper is dual; to review matters of smart grid security and to examine the effect of hacker attacks on smart grid network parameters. Through simulation we investigate how malicious activity targeting the routing layer of smart grid networks can interrupt network effectiveness.