The promise was to help you control your electricity bill by becoming more aware of your energy use. The downside is that with the data gathered, other people and businesses can also become more aware of your habits, like when you go to work, go on vacation, etc. Is the potential energy savings worth the invasion of privacy trade-off? I sure don’t think so. I really don’t want PG&E or anyone else for that matter knowing how I live my life inside my own home.
To add insult to injury, the Public Utility Commission just granted PG&E a rate hike to pay for lost profits due to these devices that no consumers asked for. In my own conversion experience, PG&E basically said “our way or the highway” – I didn’t have a choice. Now I have a ZigBee WiFi capable datalogger on the side of my house, tracking my family’s habits. Now the EFF is getting involved for privacy protection. Fortunately, the PUC has now ordered PG&E to provide an opt-out plan. With privacy issues rising, there may be more takers now.
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
California Proposes Strong Privacy Protections for “Smart Meters”
The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has released a proposal for strong privacy protections for “smart meter” data, closely following the recommendations from EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology. If adopted and finalized, the plan could become a model for how to protect sensitive consumer information while providing new ways to save energy.
California’s PG&E is currently in the process of installing “smart meters” that will collect detailed data of energy use —750 to 3000 data points per month per household—for every energy customer in the state. These meters are aimed at helping consumers monitor and control their energy usage, but the information that is collected can reveal much more about a household’s daily activities: when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath.
Many third parties will want access to this sensitive information, and the California PUC has recommended strong protections for the transfer of the data to others. This should help prevent the data’s misuse, hopefully blocking new intrusions into our home and private life. We hope the California PUC goes on to adopt its proposal, creating a blueprint for energy data and privacy protection that can be used across the country.
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It seems that when science or industry comes up with something new like the “green windmill” or the smart meter, government has a way to buy into them and it doesn’t matter what the cost or implications are , they just bound ahead.
If they implement this around here I may have to get a large battery and inverter and charge it during low rate hours and use it rather than the mains during the high rate hours. That would really confuse them I am sure. (Of course it could also be cost prohibitive…those big battery arrays are pricey)
“Many third parties will want access to this sensitive information, and the California PUC has recommended strong protections for the transfer of the data to others.”
One word: wikileaks!!!!
“This should help prevent the data’s misuse, hopefully blocking new intrusions into our home and private life”
Hopefully?????? They HOPE they can prevent misuse????
@johnboy
It has been my observation that if you write it up correctly you could probably get a very large grant to study that. The grant process is a strange beast.
I rather generate my own electricity with a propane powered generator in my basement than having this kind of equipment installed in my house.
Freedom comes with a price right?
…and Energy will be needed more and more every year: “Global Warming” photos:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-40-most-amazing-pictures-of-the-blizzaster-of?s=mobile
If CA continues to play this estranged role, I suggest that they secede from the Union. They can then march to their own tune to their heart’s content. At the very least, the rest of us will be saving some money, seeing as how we no longer will be responsible for Federal California Madness subsidies.
It all goes back to bad or the lack of representation that wants to control rather than represent.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with this technology given two things:
The data is encrypted/secure and anonymized and it’s voluntary.
Oh, wait, they even failed to do that.
You are all way ahead of us here in my part of Australia.
We have a shiny new smart meter for our home.
It is programmed to charge me a very large amount per KWH at those times when I need to use electricity.
When its very cheap, its late at night, I am asleep and all the electrical devices are off.
Great stuff.
My electricity bill is soaring and soaring.
I do so love to be paying more and more each quarter,
for the same quantity of electricity.
Privacy, be dammed, it’s my money they’re after.
And the government subsidizes G.E. to build these smart meters with stimulus funds! Not bad for a company that earned billions of dollars and paid no tax to the government on their earnings. All on the up and up of course, Jeff Immelt has no ties to the current administration in the White House.
/dripping sarc.
You wait until you are compulsorality “chipped”, with a tracking device embedded somewhere in your body. Not only will your every thought, word, movement, intake and output be monitored, but there will also be access via a “Little Red Button” (remember? Richard Curtis does…)) to your ultimate demise, messy or otherwise, thus removing the need for courts, trials or imprisonment, and the expenses thereby incurred.
There is a healthy future in store for prospective elcetro-surgeons who would be willing to risk removing or reprogramming these devices to the benefit of the user/victim (for a modest fee, of course…)
Are we scared? We should be…
re Owen
Indeed it is. The US DHS has been funding research into smart meter and smart grid security. $18m or more I think at the last count. Problem is 10m+ smart meters have already been fitted in the US often with little effective security. If those need replacing to meet new security standards, guess who’ll end up footing the bill? All because utilities want to use ‘smart’ metering to create new tariffs and charge consumers more.
well, we really are living Atlas Shrugged.
i’m just waiting to hear obama say the word ‘hoarding’.
that’s the word that comes out when there’s nothing left for the government to steal but food.
poor california… it’s just… pelosic…
Here in Tasmania I have a pay-as-you-go meter.It tells me what tariff I am on at any given time.
http://www.apayg.com.au/tasmania/about-the-technology.asp
Further to the comments on the rationing issue, one of the ‘benefits’ mooted is that properties with high energy use or less energy efficient use can be targetted for the first switch off.
A detailed study of the privacy implications here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sf392/talks/NIST-2009-talk.pdf
Something I found out recently is that police do not need any kind of warrant or subpoena to examine your electric bills — they just order the utility to provide it. Even where the bill just contains total usage, the cops use this to look for activities like marijuana growing. So with greatly increased detail as to your patterns of usage, they will have that much more access to your life.
Every so often Westar sends out a flier pushing the smart meter, though I haven’t received one in quite some time. Anyway, every time I received one I just threw it in the trash since I was concerned that the ink came off if I used it for other purposes. It’ll have to be forced upon me before I ever accept this garbage.
And as far as the actual article goes, no big surprise. Whenever some leftist idea is proposed, and followed, soon the “side-effects” become apparent and the backlash can be harsh. Good luck to those who have no choice right now on regaining a little of your freedom back.
Indeed the tyranny is spreading in Canada thanks to juicy contracts… and promotion made by the desmogblog team owner…
This is 100% the wrong way to do demand response (“smart grid/smart metering”). Pulling data to a centralized site, to then redistribute it back to the customer is so 1980’s – and creates all of these stupid privacy problems without accomplishing anything useful.
The right way to give customers the ability to respond the electric price signals is to install simple time of use meters that locally record how much power is consumed and at what price. The real time price data is delivered to the customer and the meter via the customer’s existing data connections (or through the cell phone or radio network). And the customer can choose to monitor the price signals and the locally stored usage data and they can respond to the price signals.
What some of these utilities executives somehow fail to understand is that you simply can’t share customer data – there are decades old precedents where utilities used customer data to identify pot growers. As it turns out it is illegal to do so. The law has to provide an address and customer-specific search warrant type document to access even basic customer data. Any utility sharing data will get slapped back in line pretty quickly.
Instead, they throw away billions building dedicated fiber optic networks, centrally store customer data, illegally share data, and promise to reach into your house and turn off your appliances when the technology is available. It is a giant pile of stupid.
For something so easy to do, most utilities manage to make it very expensive, invasive, and complicated.
Any scheme/deal/program that says: “smart” , ”green”, ”evolved”-run…
Of course, this “Smart Meter” cannot control your energy use, just monitor it. Next year, who knows? All part of the watermelon “Smart Grid”, that doesn’t improve energy transmission (that’s basic physics), just allows more government control.
We were ‘given’ Smart Meters last year, to save meter reading costs. Indeed. And my Electric/gas/water bills went up 20% the month after. No rate increase, and no way to determine calibration. Just higher bills. All three meters installed in one week. Low power RF to utility pole mounted receivers. With no verification, nor opt out. Greedy business or George Orwell? Is there a difference?
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1788
“… the Public Utility Commission just granted PG&E a rate hike to pay for lost profits…”
Instead of rate hikes, there are probably other places to cut costs.
We got tired of PG&E’s crap. So we re-roofed the house with solar panels. We consistantly produce more power than we need now. But they don’t pay for the extra. It just rolls over into next month’s bill, and then the next. The amount they credit you for each KWH you sell back to them is based on the wholesale value of that power, not the retail price they charge you if the power flows the other way. At the end of the year the slate is wiped clean, and we start over. There’s no incentive at all to stay connected to the grid. So we told PG&E to where they can put their smart meter.