Hardware security device facilitated trusted residential energy services

We report on our experiences in developing a hardware based security solution for a demonstration prototype of a novel, smart-grid enabled energy services delivery model. This model is based on establishing and maintaining trusted, secure dynamic collaborations with agreed, policy driven usage and billing metrics between energy service providers, energy supply companies, and the consumers' residences. In this paper, we describe how we used a specialized secure hardware device, issued by an energy service company and containing a set of tokens and cryptographic functions can be used to ensure that all transactions between the energy service company and the consumer are trusted, secure and private to the participants.