Residential flexibility characterization and trading using secure Multiparty Computation

The intermittent nature of renewable energy sources challenges the ability of grid operators to maintain balance between supply and demand of electricity. Demand response, or flexibility, is the ability of a load to modify its consumption in response to a control signal. The necessary two-way communications between end-users and grid operators introduce new risks on consumer privacy and data security. Consumer engagement in such programs tends to be low not only for privacy issues, but also because of the inappropriate incentive schemes. In this work, secure Multiparty Computation is used in a flexibility market where end-consumers provide demand response to grid operators in exchange for a monetary compensation. Multiparty computation is a cryptographic method that performs operations over encrypted data. Users submit their offers in encrypted form, and a novel way to characterize flexibility as a commodity and to determine device constraints with very little information from the consumers is developed. The market is cleared via a double auction-like process. The method is validated using flexibility offers from 200 devices of different types. We demonstrate the possibility to clear the market and allocate resources with encrypted orders for sole information.