Open and Secure: Amending the Security of the BSI Smart Metering Infrastructure to Smart Home Applications via the Smart Meter Gateway

This paper describes an implementation to enable interaction between smart home solutions and Smart Meter Gateways (SMGWs). This is conducted in the example of the approach of the AnyPLACE project to interconnect openHAB with the HAN interface of the SMGW. Furthermore, security issues in the combination of those two realms are addressed, answered and tested so that in addition to the open character of the solution, it is still secure. 1 Smart Home and Smart Metering in Europe 1.1 Challenges for Interconnecting Smart Home and Smart Metering In a time of highly volatile electricity generation, the need for a dynamic energy system and thus Smart Grids is expected [1]. Potentially, also end users with significant load or distributed energy resources can participate in the smart energy distribution by using home energy management systems or smart metering concepts which involve interactions with external market entities. One of two main challenges for interconnecting those components is the demand to support a wide range of different technologies and solutions in the background of proprietary smart home solutions. A second major challenge is the handling of private meter data according to EU requirements on smart metering as well as country specific regulations derived from them. Due to EU requirements being rather high-level, the communication and security requirements differ in each EU member country. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2017 Published by Springer International Publishing AG 2017. All Rights Reserved C. Derksen and C. Weber (Eds.): SmartER Europe 2016/2017, IFIP AICT 495, pp. 136–146, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66553-5_10 1.2 Approach for an Interoperable Solution The European research project AnyPLACE is developing a smart metering platform with management and control functionalities. The aim is to create a solution which interconnects in-home appliances, smart meters and also external services, and which can be applied in any European country – in “any place”. For making the solution highly interoperable, AnyPLACE is designed to have a common basis as well as adaptable elements. The generic part comprises e.g. a graphical user interface and energy management algorithms. The adaptable elements are realized in the following approach to connect the AnyPLACE core functionalities with other devices and systems. An existing open-source smart home framework openHAB [2] has been chosen to interconnect a broad variety of different technologies, systems and products. One of its core features is the possibility to amend it with new functionalities e.g. adding the support of new protocols to add new kinds of devices. This can be done by adding optional packages, which can be selected from awide range of already existing add-ons developed for different smart home appliances and systems. In the AnyPLACE project, additional country specific packages have been designed to connect meters to the smart home system, taking into account respective technological, privacy as well as security requirements which were analyzed for each addressed country. Further details about the requirements which were identified for the different European countries are described in [3]. The present paper focuses on the application environment and thus requirements of the German market and the derived solutions. At first, the regulations for the German smart metering infrastructure as well as possible resulting functionalities are sketched. Afterwards, the implementation of solutions to enable an interaction between this infrastructure and smart home systems is described in details. Finally, the paper gives insights of how those solutions for an interaction between the German smart metering infrastructure and smart home solutions shall be tested regarding security considerations. 2 German Smart Metering Infrastructure Functionalities 2.1 BSI Smart Metering Infrastructure Offers Platform for Connection of Subsystems In Germany, the smart meter rollout has recently been initialized by law and will start in 2017. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) prescribes the security architecture for a secure and transparent handling of the end users’ private meter data [4–6]. The Smart Meter Gateway (SMGW) is a core element in this architecture as it is depicted in Fig. 1. Its name suggests that the only purpose of the “Smart Meter Gateway” is to serve as a gateway to transfer meter data from smart meters to the respective energy supplier. But it is not limited to this functionality. It does provide secure communications to meters in the Local Metrological Network (LMN), but also to external service providers (EMT) in the Wide Area Network (WAN) as well as to the Home Area Network (HAN). Due to the communication with those networks, the SMGW serves as a platform to interconnect sub-systems that enable several additional functionalities. Amending the Security of the BSI Smart Metering Infrastructure 137