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Secure and Reliable Power Consumption Monitoring in Untrustworthy Micro-grids

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Future Network Systems and Security (FNSS 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 523))

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Abstract

Micro-grid architectures based on renewable energy sources offer a viable solution to electricity provision in regions that are not connected to the national power grid or that are severely affected by load shedding. The limited power generated in micro-grids however makes monitoring power consumption an important consideration in guaranteeing efficient and fair energy sharing. A further caveat is that adversarial data tampering poses a major impediment to fair energy sharing on small scale energy systems, like micro-grids, and can result in a complete breakdown of the system. In this paper, we present an innovative approach to monitoring home power consumption in smart micro-grids. This is done by taking into account power consumption measurement on a per appliance and/or device basis. Our approach works by employing a distributed snapshot algorithm to asynchronously collect the power consumption data reported by the appliances and devices. In addition, we provide a characterization of noise that affects the quality of the data making it difficult to differentiate measurement errors and power fluctuations from deliberate attempts to misreport consumption.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa

    Pacome L. Ambassa & Anne V. D. M. Kayem

  2. Norwegian Information Security Laboratory, Faculty of Computer Science, Gjøvik University College, Gjøvik, Norway

    Stephen D. Wolthusen

  3. Department of Mathematics, Information Security Group, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Stephen D. Wolthusen

  4. Hasso Plattner Institute at University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Christoph Meinel

Authors
  1. Pacome L. Ambassa
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  2. Anne V. D. M. Kayem
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  3. Stephen D. Wolthusen
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  4. Christoph Meinel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pacome L. Ambassa .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia

    Robin Doss

  2. Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Selwyn Piramuthu

  3. ESCP Europe, Paris, France

    Wei ZHOU

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Ambassa, P.L., Kayem, A.V.D.M., Wolthusen, S.D., Meinel, C. (2015). Secure and Reliable Power Consumption Monitoring in Untrustworthy Micro-grids. In: Doss, R., Piramuthu, S., ZHOU, W. (eds) Future Network Systems and Security. FNSS 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 523. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19210-9_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19210-9_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19209-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19210-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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