Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Utility Networks
Saurabh Amin, Galina A. Schwartz, Alvaro Cardenas, Shankar Sastry

Citation
Saurabh Amin, Galina A. Schwartz, Alvaro Cardenas, Shankar Sastry. "Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Utility Networks". IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, 2015.

Abstract
The article by Amin, Schwartz, Cárdenas, and Sastry investigates energy theft in smart utility networks using techniques from game theory and detection theory. The game-theoretic model considers pricing and investment decisions by a distribution utility when it serves a population of strategic customers, and a fraction of customers are fraudulent. Each fraudulent customer chooses to steal electricity after accounting for the probability of fraud detection and the amount of fine that they pay if detected. The probabilistic rate of successful detection depends on the distributor's implementation of a diagnostic scheme and increases with level of investment made by the distributor monitoring fraud. The distributor (leader) chooses the level of investment, the price per unit quantity of billed electricity, and the fine schedule. The customers (followers) make their choices after they learn the distributor's decision. For specific assumptions on customer utilities and a distributor's profit function, this leader-follower game is used to compute equilibrium customer and distributor choices. For two environments, namely an unregulated monopoly and the case of perfect competition, the results provide an estimate of the extent of stealing for different levels of investment (high versus low). These results point toward the need for creating regulatory measures to incentivize investments in security and fraud monitoring.

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Citation formats

• HTML

  Saurabh Amin, Galina A. Schwartz, Alvaro Cardenas, Shankar
  Sastry. <a
  href="http://www.cps-forces.org/pubs/141.html"
  >Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft Detection in
  Smart Utility Networks</a>, <i>IEEE CONTROL
  SYSTEMS MAGAZINE</i>,  2015.

• Plain text

  Saurabh Amin, Galina A. Schwartz, Alvaro Cardenas, Shankar
  Sastry. "Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft
  Detection in Smart Utility Networks". <i>IEEE
  CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE</i>,  2015.

• BibTeX

  @article{AminSchwartzCardenasSastry15_GameTheoreticModelsOfElectricityTheftDetectionInSmart,
      author = {Saurabh Amin and Galina A. Schwartz and Alvaro
                Cardenas and Shankar Sastry},
      title = {Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft
                Detection in Smart Utility Networks},
      journal = {IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE},
      year = {2015},
      abstract = {The article by Amin, Schwartz, Cárdenas, and
                Sastry investigates energy theft in smart utility
                networks using techniques from game theory and
                detection theory. The game-theoretic model
                considers pricing and investment decisions by a
                distribution utility when it serves a population
                of strategic customers, and a fraction of
                customers are fraudulent. Each fraudulent customer
                chooses to steal electricity after accounting for
                the probability of fraud detection and the amount
                of fine that they pay if detected. The
                probabilistic rate of successful detection depends
                on the distributor's implementation of a
                diagnostic scheme and increases with level of
                investment made by the distributor monitoring
                fraud. The distributor (leader) chooses the level
                of investment, the price per unit quantity of
                billed electricity, and the fine schedule. The
                customers (followers) make their choices after
                they learn the distributor's decision. For
                specific assumptions on customer utilities and a
                distributor's profit function, this
                leader-follower game is used to compute
                equilibrium customer and distributor choices. For
                two environments, namely an unregulated monopoly
                and the case of perfect competition, the results
                provide an estimate of the extent of stealing for
                different levels of investment (high versus low).
                These results point toward the need for creating
                regulatory measures to incentivize investments in
                security and fraud monitoring.},
      URL = {http://cps-forces.org/pubs/141.html}
  }
  

Posted by Saurabh Amin on 16 Apr 2016.
Groups: forces
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