A thermal prosumer is a building or user that both consumes heat from a district heating network and can send surplus heat back into it. This bidirectional behavior turns a simple supply system into a coordinated control environment, where metering, forecasting, valves, and control logic all have to agree on what is happening in real time.
In cyber security, thermal prosumers matter because they add more data flows and more decisions to protect. If telemetry is delayed, spoofed, or manipulated, operators may misjudge available heat, overload parts of the network, or reject usable surplus. Attackers could target sensors, communications, or the control interface to distort demand and supply balancing. Defenders therefore use integrity checks, plausibility rules, segregated forecasting, and fail-safe fallback behavior so the grid can keep operating safely even when model outputs are uncertain or unavailable.