Introduction
The energy infrastructure is one of the biggest and most critical infrastructures undergoing the transition towards a “smart and sustainable grid”. Such infrastructure is characterized by integrating renewable and distributed energy resources, user-awareness and user-centric services, and efficient and reliable energy supply. While those advanced features benefit from analyzing the data, e.g., from end users and energy usage statistics for optimizing energy supplies and services, privacy concerns about data sharing and usage arise as barriers for energy consumers and producers. Privacy-sensitive data leaked or inferred by powerful learning engines can jeopardize consumer participation and acceptance. The company side must meet legislative privacy compliance, e.g., GDPR when handling user information. There is a trade-off between privacy preservation and data leverage for service optimization. Nevertheless, there is an absence of clear boundaries for data privacy in practice, nor a comparative privacy analysis on energy-transaction-related data, which is the basis for developing privacy-aware approaches, strategies, and applications.
Goal
This thesis project aims to systematically review datasets used for privacy studies in smart grid and transactive energy systems to clarify and formalize privacy in energy transacting. First, we will look into legislative definitions of privacy concepts that are relevant or applicable to energy transaction activities, and review from a technical perspective the scenarios and applications where privacy issues occur, the corresponding privacy protection methods, and how those methods are related and classified. Then we will survey the available databases for privacy studies, applications, and projects related to transactive energy, and formalize our knowledge by qualitative and quantitative analyses of the reviewed datasets via categorization and statistics.