Electricity theft detection by sources of threats for smart city planning

Abstract

Smart city adoption and deployment has taken the centre stage worldwide with its realisation clearly hinged on energy efficiency, but its planning is threatened by the vulnerability of smart grids (SGs). Adversaries launch attacks with various motives, but the rampaging electricity theft menace is causing major concerns to SGs deployments and consequently, energy efficiency. Smart electricity meters deployments via the advanced metering infrastructure present promising solutions and even greater potential as it provides adequate data for analytical inferences for achieving proactive measures against various cyberattacks. This study suggests the sources of threats as the first step of such proactive measures of curbing electricity thefts. It provides a framework for monitoring, identifying and curbing the threats based on factors indicative of electricity thefts in a smart utility network. The proposed framework basically focuses on these symptoms of the identified threats indicative of possible electricity theft occurrence to decide on preventing thefts. This study gives a useful background to smart city planners in realising a more reliable, robust and secured energy management scheme required for a sustainable city.