| Title | Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Utility Networks |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2015 |
| Authors | Saurabh Amin, Galina A. Schwartz, Alvaro Cardenas, Shankar Sastry |
| Journal | IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE |
| Abstract | The article by Amin, Schwartz, Cardenas, 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 | https://cps-vo.org/node/38450 |
| Citation Key | AminSchwartzCardenasSastry15_GameTheoreticModelsOfElectricityTheftDetectionInSmart |
Game-Theoretic Models of Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Utility Networks