Location Privacy for Vehicle-to-Grid Interaction through Battery Management

Vehicle-to-grid research explores the possibility of centrally coordinating the charging behaviour of electric-drive vehicles and of employing such vehicles as a distributed grid resource. As such, they could be used both to improve the power grid's reliability and to store excess renewable energy. The information observable by the central coordination instance, however, can be a threat to the privacy of vehicle owners. In this work, we investigate when the observed information allows for vehicles to be distinguished and traced between stops and when not so that vehicles will mix with each other. Specifically, we analyse the role of battery information and reveal how it can influence vehicle mixing. Furthermore, we consider information minimisation, suppression, and generalisation and discuss their effects both on vehicle mixing and on service functionality. Lastly, we show that parking lots and garages naturally provide the conditions necessary for vehicle mixing and give an evaluation of mixing for this context.