Power scheduling in privacy enhanced microgrid networks with renewables and storage

As many countries embark on a major transitioning to the Smart Grid (SG), realizing the benefits of the new paradigm depends on generation, collection, and usage of unprecedented amount of data. With such proliferated data processing, there are legitimate concerns that call for sound privacy measures to ensure proper safekeeping. A significant portion of the potential benefits of the SG initiative, thus, relies on devising convincing mechanisms to strengthen the privacy. As a new distribution subsystem, microgrids are expected to play a crucial role in the SG. In this paper, we develop a privacy-aware microgrid power scheduling formulation with renewable sources and energy storage where five different classes of appliances are prioritized by smart meters. Our analysis shows that there is a tradeoff between maximizing the power usage and privacy levels. Hence, it is not possible to find a solution that maximizes both objectives simultaneously. However, it is possible to achieve significantly higher levels of privacy preservation with moderate sacrifice from the power usage, especially when the number of users is high.