Digital signatures and certificates for each individual meter may be considered, but it's worth to mention that other simple measures, supported by the Smart Grid infrastructure being deployed, can help to identify some type of data manipulation. For instance, implementing power flow balance monitoring at the distribution transformer level adds a little cost overhead and can help to pin point energy theft situations created by meter tampering, secondary network by-pass and even consumption record identity manipulation.

AMI deployment cases at under developed countries typically are driven by business cases focused on fighting energy theft, and bring interesting experiences to the table on this particular subject.