Secure Data Transaction Protocol for Privacy Protection in Smart Grid Environment

Recently, it has been found that it is important to use a smart grid to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide. A smart grid is a digitally enabled electrical grid that gathers, distributes, and acts on information regarding the behavior of all participants (suppliers and consumers) to improve the efficiency, importance, reliability, economics, and sustainability of electricity services. The smart grid technology uses two-way communication, where users can monitor and limit the electricity consumption of their home appliances in real time. Likewise, power companies can monitor and limit the electricity consumption of home appliances for stabilization of the electricity supply. However, if information regarding the measured electricity consumption of a user is leaked, serious privacy issues may arise, as such information may be used as a source of data mining of the electricity consumption patterns or life cycles of home residents. In this paper, we propose a data transaction protocol for privacy protection in a smart grid. In addition, a power company cannot decrypt an encrypted home appliance ID without the user`s password.