The nonprofit European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS) and Elster have announced that they will collaborate with Dutch energy network provider Alliander to provide a proof-of-concept pilot project to demonstrate advanced privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) for smart metering networks.
Responsible for the regional distribution of electricity and gas to 3.3 million customers in the Netherlands, Alliander is currently developing and implementing smart metering and smart grid infrastructures. Elster will be supplying an end-to-end, market-ready solution for the PET pilot, which forms part of Alliander's small-scale smart meter rollout that commenced in the first half of this year.
ENCS selected Elster to implement the PET protocols on the Elster AS300 multi-utility smart electricity meter and the Elster EnergyICT EIServer, a meter management head-end solution, for Alliander's PET pilot.
According to Elster, the PET protocols use cryptographic methods optimized specifically for aggregating data, which means any information collected from smart meters is unusable until aggregated with measurements from other meters.
Elster says this will allow Alliander to meet strict privacy requirements mandated in the Netherlands, while simultaneously being able to perform advanced grid management and optimization based on the metering data.
