A Privacy-Aware Architecture for Energy Management Systems in Smart Grids

Electrical power grids are in a phase of transition. Therefore, control mechanisms are needed that allow the integration of renewable energies, decentralized generation and storage systems, as well as electric vehicles into the arising smart grid. In this paper, we propose a privacy-aware architecture based on the principles of Organic Computing to tackle the aforementioned challenges. It enables controlled self-organization on all levels, from in-house optimization through demand side management to mains utility and management of entire smart grids. Physical as well as virtual devices and entities can be incorporated flexibly into the control loop of the proposed architecture. Tofu fill privacy requirements, a component named Data Custodian Service is introduced. It handles data exchange across system borders while protecting privacy and interests of data owners. Privacy is preserved by giving the data owner the choice to control data access based on temporal and spatial resolution and on precision of the requested data sets. The application to real world scenarios is shown using the example of a building energy management system that implements the suggested architecture.