This book presents the different challenges faced in achieving a modern 21st century electricity grid, among which the prime issues are privacy protection of the customer and a monopoly over the prices by the Energy Suppliers. Currently most solutions are mostly theoretical and of little practical importance in real world, because of the complexity involved in implementing them. Furthermore, most work has has had a narrow focus on privacy protection, with little attention towards real time billing, a vision in which energy prices charged to the customer would be more competitive. I present a smart metering architecture in this book, which if implemented could help solve both issues at hand.