Implementation of secured smart metering system

For the last few years, smart grids have been the focus of both research and industry. Smart grids provide a completely controllable and monitored network, where two-way communications between the different elements of the grid and the control centre is possible. Smart meters are considered to be an important element of smart grids that is used to monitor the electricity usage of different customers, both residential and industrial, and to feed back the billing information to the customer. Wrong readings can result from tampering or from malfunctioning of the meter. These wrong readings of electricity meters can result in a huge money loss to the electric utility companies, or to the customers who can in turn sue the electric utility companies and force them to pay large penalties. In this proposal, we explore the practical challenges in the implementation of a novel method for securing the readings of smart electricity meters against tampering or malfunctioning. The novel method applies the idea of linear error-correcting block codes, which has originally been used in detecting and correcting errors in data transmission, to detect attacks aimed at changing the readings of the smart meters and take corrective actions accordingly. One of the biggest challenges in the implementation of the proposed method is to develop check meters, which are smart electricity meters that can measure the energy delivered by a group of cables. These meters are different from the regular meters that can only measure the energy delivered by one cable. Once these meters are developed, we plan to implement a proof of concept with a Hamming code that can secure a group of four houses using seven meters.