  A smart meter (SM) periodically measures end-user electricity consumption and
reports it to a utility provider (UP). Despite the advantages of SMs, their use
leads to serious concerns about consumer privacy. In this paper, SM privacy is
studied by considering the presence of an energy harvesting device (EHD) as a
means of masking the user's input load. The user can satisfy part or all of
his/her energy needs from the EHD, and hence, less information can be leaked to
the UP via the SM. The EHD is typically equipped with a rechargeable energy
storage device, i.e., a battery, whose instantaneous energy content limits the
user's capability in covering his/her energy usage. Privacy is measured by the
information leaked about the user's real energy consumption when the UP
observes the energy requested from the grid, which the SM reads and reports to
the UP. The minimum information leakage rate is characterized as a computable
information theoretic single-letter expression when the EHD battery capacity is
either infinite or zero. Numerical results are presented for a discrete binary
input load to illustrate the potential privacy gains from the existence of a
storage device.
