Mission and Vision

Happenings

Since 2017, IICE researchers have managed to secure grants and involve in projects covering the following research areas:

• Smart Monitoring and Surveillance for Energy Supply Industry
• Smart Grid Technology and Applications
• Energy Supply Data Security and Privacy Protection
• Energy Supply Demand Forecasting
• Applications of Virtual and Mixed Reality for Energy Supply Industry

The following are description of selected IICE key projects:

A Blockchain-based Platform for Trading of Smart Meter Data with User-centric

Smart meter is a device that enables the power consumption of a premise to be tracked more frequently and accurately. This capability is beneficial to both the power utility company and its customers. In fact, the power consumption data may also be useful to third parties such as marketeers or manufacturers of electrical appliances who can use the data for marketing purposes or for improving their products and services. However, power usage data collected by smart meter is protected by Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and cannot simply be shared with third parties without explicit consent from the premise owner.

The project proposed a blockchain-based platform that would enable premise owners to provide permission for their data to be shared or traded with requesting third parties. The power consumption data is encrypted in storage and can only be read by those who have the proper key to decrypt the data, where the key is granted only to those who have been granted permission by the premise owner. The proposed blockchain-based platform would enable power utility customers to have more control on how their power consumption data to be used outside of the power utility provider. Given that the same data usage nature exists in other companies or government departments, the proposed platform can also be adapted for use by various other industries and government operations.

Intelligent Data Selection Algorithm for Privacy Preservation

This project aims to develop an intelligent data selection algorithm and a prototype application that would enable data analytics task to be done while preserving the privacy of user information. In previous project (Privacy Preservation technique for Smart Metering Data) an application has been developed that can apply privacy preservation techniques to a set of data generated by the smart meter. However, the selection of data fields on which the privacy preservation techniques are to be applied needs to be done manually.

The fields need to be properly chosen such that the analytics task can still be done while the privacy of user information is preserved. The problem is that it may be difficult for the user to choose the relevant fields. Therefore, this project proposed an intelligent algorithm that can automatically choose the relevant fields on which the privacy preservation techniques should be applied to. Noted that the privacy preservation task on large data is a computing-intensive process. Hence, by identifying which data need to be shared, the privacy preservation task can be performed much faster as compared to processing the whole data. This project will give impacts to the TNB as the intelligent system enables automatic selection of data from the selected fields to perform analytic tasks. Furthermore, this project will also give impacts to the nation through a trustworthy system that will preserve the privacy of customer data and increase the public confidence towards TNB.

Research

At IICE, we have a pool of experts and researchers who are actively involved in research and consultancy work that address the current needs of the industries with respect to the application of ICT knowledge, techniques and tools in improving their business processes, particularly in the energy domain, which can lead to improved productivity. With years of experience in the energy informatics field, we are capable of offering the appropriate advices and solutions to address relevant business use cases. Our areas of expertise include, but not limited to the following:

• Energy data hub
• Electricity deregulation & unbundling
• Multiple Broadband Network
• Signal Strength Analysis
• Cyber Security
• Computer Forensic
• Information Security
• Smart Grid
• Intelligent and Autonomous Systems
• Data Analytics
• Robotics
• Knowledge Management Strategy
• User Experience and Interaction Design

As of June 2020, IICE has managed to secure and completed many research projects funded by various national and international bodies. Some of the active and completed key projects are listed below:

For more project listing from IICE, please visits http://iice.uniten.edu.my/02_activeproject.html for active project list and http://iice.uniten.edu.my/02_completedproject.html for completed project list.

Institute of Informatics and Computing in Energy
Universiti Tenaga Nasional
Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN
43000 Kajang
Selangor, Malaysia