A Secure, lightweight, and verifiable data aggregation scheme for smart grids

In the digital era, the extensive implementation of smart meters has revolutionized grid management by enabling detailed, real-time electricity consumption analysis every 15 to 30 minutes, thereby optimizing energy distribution and enhancing service reliability. However, the detailed data captured by smart meters, while beneficial for grid management, raises significant privacy concerns as it can reveal personal user behaviors, thereby posing a threat to individual privacy. To address this challenge, this paper introduces an advanced Verifiable Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation (VPPDA) scheme for smart grids. This scheme proposes a novel protocol (HTVDA) that incorporates the Paillier cryptosystem with a threshold decryption technique to hide the private key of our system, ensuring that the private key is not available to any participant other than the TTP. As a result, HTVDA is able to prevent user collusion and key leakage. Preliminary tests demonstrate that our approach significantly reduces the computational and communication overhead compared to existing methods, enhancing encryption speed by up to approximately seven times while maintaining high-security levels.