Privacy Preserving Demand Forecasting to Encourage Consumer Acceptance of Smart Energy Meters

Briggs, Christopher; Fan, Zhong; Andras, Peter

Abstract

In this proposal paper we highlight the need for privacy preserving energy demand forecasting to allay a major concern consumers have about smart meter installations. High resolution smart meter data can expose many private aspects of a consumer’s household such as occupancy, habits and individual appliance usage. Yet smart metering infrastructure has the potential to vastly reduce carbon emissions from the energy sector through improved operating efficiencies. We propose the application of a distributed machine learning setting known as federated learning for energy demand forecasting at various scales to make load prediction possible whilst retaining the privacy of consumers’ raw energy consumption data.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: NeurIPS 2020 Workshop: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning
• Start Date: Dec 11, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 10, 2021
• Book Title: NeurIPS 2020 Workshop: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2808769
• Publisher URL: https://www.climatechange.ai/papers/neurips2020/78
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.07449