You don’t often hear Apple, Google, Microsoft and SDG&E mentioned in the same breath. But now you do. All of these companies are looking into ways to handle data and protect the end user or customer privacy. The cutting-edge technology is called differential privacy.
SDG&E is part of this new frontier and is leading the utility industry in testing this technology. For the past year, we have been working with Microsoft on a proof in concept project to make smart meter data available to researchers and local cities while protecting our customers’ privacy. The goal is to meet or exceed complex regulatory privacy requirements, for example, by providing accurate energy use data to cities to complete their climate action plans while protecting individual customer privacy. SDG&E will be evaluating our next steps after the completion of the project.
Our efforts to explore ways to protect customer privacy were included in a recent Wall Street Journal article.
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