Preserving the Privacy and Cybersecurity of Home Energy Data

Richard Bean, Yanjun Zhang, Ryan K. L. Ko, Xinyu Mao, Guangdong Bai

Abstract: The field of energy data presents many opportunities for applying the principles of privacy and cybersecurity. In this chapter, we focus on home electricity data and the possible use and misuse of this data for attacks and corresponding protection mechanisms. If an attacker can deduce sufficiently precise information about a house location and its occupancy at given times, this may present a physical security threat. We review previous literature in this area. We then obtain hourly solar generation data from over 2300 houses and develop an attack to identify the location of the houses using historical weather data. We discuss common use cases of home energy data and suggest defences against the proposed attack using privacy and cryptographic techniques.