Fig. 1

Overview of the proposed protocol: All participating utilities \({\mathsf {\mathbf {U}}}_{u} \in \mathcal {U}\) provide embedded template load profiles \(\mathcal {L}_{u}\) corresponding to their tariffs T _u,l to a third party TP. A smart meter SM sends its embedded load profile forecast \({\tilde {\mathbf {F}}}\) to this third party which returns the best-matching utility index u ^∗ and its tariff index l ^∗. Subsequently, the smart meter can request information about the best-matching tariff \(\protect \phantom {\dot {i}\!}T_{u^{*},l^{*}}\protect \) from the best-matching utility \(\protect \phantom {\dot {i}\!}{\mathsf {\mathbf {U}}}_{u^{*}}\protect \) through oblivious transfer. Black vertical bars indicate rate limiters