Anonymous data collection for the smart grid

The smart grid has great potential to improve the reliability and efficiency of power distribution by providing timely, accurate information to utility companies and allowing for cooperative control of demand at the client side. However, naive implementations of smart grid data collection could jeopardize the privacy of consumers, and concerns about privacy are a significant obstacle to the rollout of smart grid technology. We propose a communication system for smart meters that allows the utility owner to query meter data and publish demand-response commands without compromising the privacy of participating customers. Our protocol is scalable to networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes, and requires only basic cryptography primitives that can feasibly be implemented on the limited hardware available to smart meters.