Key Distribution and management for power aggregation and accountability in Advance Metering Infrastructure

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is a critical system in smart grid. While readings of aggregated power consumption are needed for near real time response to energy demand, relatively slow paced readings of power demand in each individual household are also very important, because they account for an accurate billing for energy usage at each household, as well as identifying which households may be cheating or may have compromised their meters to report false data. Investigation on properly designed key distribution and management scheme for securely gathering both individual and aggregated meter's readings is of paramount importance. Based on this observation, we propose a framework for key distribution and management for both aggregation and accountability in a neighborhood area network employed by a utility company in its power distribution system. Specifically, a key distribution table is set up for each smart meter to carry out homomorphic encryption for secure data aggregation, while a loose time synchronized key scheme is proposed for low rate data collection of each smart meter. Security analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.