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.
Well, as long as there are laws to protect us from lawyers, legislators and government regulators and only approved ways that the information can be sold for gain, what’s not to like? More and more – and especially so with energy – activitists and government work hand in hand to contorl us for our own good. I don’t see any proposed protections against control but a lot of rationale about energy efficiency to permit control. Misuse of information by the “bad old corporations” is a misdirection of attention form control of your house and of you.
Even though there are advocates for protecting our personal information, this information always gets out.
I have zero faith in short term victories, and in a slow dance towards limiting personal freedoms, which this is really all about, the next step will be to tie into the major appliances, more automated than ever, and start shutting them down too.
A great American once said, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The context of the quotation was that they were described as the nine most terrifying words in the English language. I think the phrase should be amended to somehow include modern green terminology.
Does anyone have information on political movements against smartmeters? Any lawsuits? Any politicians running against them?
Given that energy generation costs vary by an order of magnitude over the course of the day, allowing time of use pricing in the residential sector (it already is widely used in commercial/industrial sectors) would help make the electricity market considerably more efficient and reduce capital outlays for unnecessary peaking units.
While there are legitimate privacy concerns that need to be addressed (and some rather silly objections by folks scared of “radiation” from their smart meter), in the long run having the ability to do real-time pricing would better align incentives between producers and consumers. As free market advocates, folks here should appreciate the benefits of that.
REPLY: The time of use option is the primary benefit of the SmartMeter. I have that feature enabled. However, even PG&E admits they really botched the rollout of these and once public trust is lost, it is very hard to regain. Making people pay for a meter post facto, when they never had to pay for one before (since it is part of the service) is doubly stupid public relations on PG&E’s part. It is like the IRS charging citizens to accept their tax return and file it (and I don’t put that past the government to implement someday) – Anthony
We here in N. Calif. would like to opt out of Calif.
We are the State of Jefferson, and the sooner we rid ourselves of the control freaks in Sacramento, who have abandoned this part of the State not once but twice, the better.
Zeke Hausfather is clueless about the free market. These meters amount to government regulation. Only those who fawn over Big Brother and the concomiant loss of freedom would approve of this scheme. The rest of us are happy to regulate our electricity use on our own, based on our monthly utility bill. Zeke needs to read the article.
Dennis Cox says:
May 12, 2011 at 8:06 am
“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.”
This is not a solution to the problem. You have been coerced into buying your freedom. And your future options are limited. For people living in the frozen north of the USA, St. Louis and north, your option is no genuine option. There isn’t enough sunlight.
However, the big problem is we should not be coerced in these matters. We should fight for our liberties.
First the old mechanical electricity consumption meters are to be replaced with all electronic ‘smart’ meters.
The smart meters are used to analyze peak use times and forward the data to the home office.
The home office uses the data to charge more for electricity during peak hours.
Next the ‘smart’ meters are replaced by even smarter meters that have features to ration electricity by remote control. Not long after the remote control features are implemented, the techno-geek comedians learn to hack in and switch off people’s houses as a joke.
At last, the Sun experiences a huge coronal mass ejection, and the smart meters switch off everybody’s house.
There are some serious misconceptions on what “smart meters” can and cannot do in this thread.
I’m not going to say whether they are good or bad, or minimize a personal data security risk. But some of the comments here are based more on paranoia, and less on the capabilities of the meters.
I have worked on adjuncts to several smart meters, including the one pictured in this article (the GE I210+). While I am no expert on smart metering or smart grids, I do have knowledge of what the meters can store in their databases, what data can be reported back to the utilities and what level of control the utilities have over individual consumer appliances. Believe it or not, there are actually benefits for the consumer with a smart grid. I’ll cover some of those towards the end of this response.
First and foremost: the data gathered does not directly say whether someone is at home or not. Such information is implicit; i.e., if the air conditioner temperature was raised in the summer day time, then it is likely that no-one is at home. However, note that the meter itself has no knowledge of what a thermostat is set to. Nor does a meter need to store data on what an individual residential appliance is consuming what power. Technically, it could record that data. However, the standard that drives what is collected by meter data bases in the United States (and is used de-facto in Australia, since Australia does not have a comparable standard), ANSI C12.19, includes no provision for such data. The standard does provide for “Manufacturer Tables”, which are essentially custom data bases, but there is no reason for a meter to know or care about a thermostat setting. Should a utility be caught collecting such data in meter data bases, they should rightfully be castigated for doing so. Note that state utility regulatory agencies generally have strict guidelines over what the utilities do collect and what is contained in the meter data bases. Should you have a concern about what is actually collected, you should contact the regulatory agency and ask them.
So, just what *is* collected by smart meters? Well, the most important thing to a consumer and utility alike, is something called “Load Profile”. Load profile is mostly power consumed over a discrete period of time. It is usually recorded in KWatts per time unit, where time unit is anything from 1 hour down to 5 minutes. Some meters can actually collect data down to the 1 minute interval. However, the smaller the time unit, the more memory required to store the data, the more expensive the meter (or the less cumulative time that can be stored). Consequently, the 5 minute or less interval data is usually only used for diagnostic purposes. 15 minute or 1 hour load profile data seems to be very common. Load profile data allows a utility to statistically determine where power is required at what times. Residential, commercial and industrial load profiles will be different, and the types of energy consumed (inductive, resistive) will also be different, and this allows utilities to plan generation and distribution more efficiently. There is much more these meters can do, but for the purposes of a concise discussion about risks these meters provide, this will suffice.
So what is the Zigbee radio for? Well, the Zigbee radio can serve two purposes: 1) as a backhaul network to send collected meter data back to the utility, and 2) as an in-house system to talk to individual appliances within a residence. Personally, I consider the Zigbee radio the weakest link in the security chain. Note however, that most homes use IEEE 802.11 WiFi radios to communicate to home PCs. These networks carry far more personal data then energy consumption (and even the inferred “is anyone home” data that would take some analysis to determine). It is a security risk, and consumers are rightfully wary of them. But the risks should be put into context of the risks we already take and are comfortable with (e.g., our WiFi connections).
The first use of the Zigbee radios listed above, the backhaul network for the utility, is usually only used where the utility does not have another backhaul data network. Note that most large utilities in major urban areas already have some form of backhaul network. They can already turn power on and off to your house remotely (called appropriately “Remote Disconnect”), and report power consumed for a billing period. These backhaul networks can be carried over the existing power lines, by proprietary wireless networks (which should be considered more of a security risk than Zigbee, since the standards for these networks are un-published and cannot be reviewed), or other separate communications infrastructure.
The second use of the Zigbee radios, the in-house communication’s system, is very interesting. This use forms a network called a “Home Area Network” or HAN, and this is what is used to control individual appliances in a residential home. Only appliances that are a Smart Energy device can be controlled. So even if a smart meter with a Zigbee radio has been installed at your home, no appliance control is possible unless you have explicitly placed Smart Energy appliances in your home an enabled them.
So what is “control” of an individual Smart Energy appliance? Well, as you can expect, part of that control is allowing the utility to turn on/off non-critical appliances during a peak power consumption events. If the utility has run out of reserve power, and has to resort to rolling black outs, an alternative is offered by Smart Energy appliances. This could allow the utility to turn off the pool pump, the electric dryer, the air-conditioner, and other non-critical appliances as opposed to whole-sale neighborhood blackouts.
However, this “control” is not just turning things on and off. The electric industry is moving toward tiered rate structure charges for power consumption. That is, electricity consumed during peak power consumption time frames will be more expensive than that used during non-peak times. The HAN network allows the utility to communicate to individual appliances what the electric rates are for specific times, and this allows the appliance (as directed by the appliance owner), when to turn itself on or when to throttle itself. So, if you have your e-car parked in the garage, the HAN enabled charger for the car can decide when it is the cheapest to use the most juice to re-energize the car batteries. Ditto for electric clothes dryers (throw your clothes in the dryer, and tell the dryer to turn on when power is the cheapest), air conditioner (keep the house a bit warmer during peak hours on a summer day, and cool it more when off-peak), etc. The HAN network would also allow the consumer to see exactly what appliance is consuming what power and which appliance is costing them the most.
Since this response is too long already, I will end this discussion here. In summary, there are benefits to a consumer (smarter use of power which can result in a lower electric bill, avoidance of blackouts during high power consumption times) with smart energy. These benefits, like any technological development, do come with risks. It is up to consumers to decide if these risks are worth the benefits.
Lose some data? It’s not like it is secret nuclear weapon data that Los Alamos Labs work with.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation’s most important nuclear weapons lab, lost another hard disk drive filled with classified information, once again throwing a spotlight on lab officials who have been trying to re-emerge from years of scandals and mismangement.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/05/63553
Eh.
I’m still making my Faraday trellis.
Funny how the many of the same folks who support net neutrality don’t want electicity use neutrality.
The gubment knows better how to make decisions than you do.
I picture the Post Office. The feds could take over all the utilities and become a large GSE. All energy would be both free and rationed.
Smokey,
Say I was a utility company like Duke or PG&E. It costs me about $1 per kwh to buy electricity from producers at 7 PM on a hot July day when electricity use hits its peak. Just 4 hours later, at midnight, it costs me $0.04 cents to buy the same kwh. Without smart meters, I can only charge the customer a fixed rate (say, $0.14 per kwh) for all usage during the month. This misalignment of price signals is a barrier to an efficient market for energy.
To give another example, most folks think that electric cars will make up a greater share of vehicles on the road in the future. However, if everyone gets home from work and plugs in the vehicle at the same time, it would dramatically increase peak load and costs for utilities. Smart meters (and associated time of use pricing) would allow a utility to provide incentives (e.g. much cheaper energy) for customers to choose to charge their vehicle overnight when electricity is cheap rather than immediately when they get home.
I’ll agree with Anthony that PG&E screwed the pooch on the smart meter rollout (quick disclaimer: my day job involves working in the energy efficiency space, so I’ve met with PG&E’s smart meter team numerous times). They installed the meters (sans any time of use pricing) right as they instituted a overall rate increase and just before one of the hottest summers on record for the central valley, causing folks to blame the smart meter when their bills went up. They also failed to communicate effectively to their customers about why they were installing the meter and what benefits it could provide.
Similarly, I’m skeptical that we will see much adoption in the home automation space, at least in the short term. Folks really don’t want the utility shutting off their A/C when its hot. A much better approach is to 1) align economic incentives between utilities and consumers via time of use pricing and 2) use all the data available from smart meters to pinpoint potential savings opportunities for homes (e.g. much higher summer cooling use than seen in similar homes) and provide residential homeowners with targeted savings recommendations that they can choose to follow if they want to save. Obviously smart meter data comes with privacy concerns, and any transmission of data to third parties should occur only under strict privacy rules and standards.
Ron Dean, that was interesting but one thing that I caught out of it was that it was more important to control energy usage during ‘peak demand’ time than it was to expand our generating capacity so that the energy would/could be available during that ‘peak demand’ period. Again, the utilities are readying us for a third world future rather than trying to keep up with the first world. When did we get so tired that we just gave up?
You only need ‘smart meters’ if you’re planning on making electricity a scarce resource.
All this is the downstream effect of making electricity expensive and unreliable to produce. How many gas fired power stations can you build for the cost of all this ‘smart meter’ infrastructure?
Oh, I forgot, the consumer is paying for the ‘smart’ meter infrastructure (and all the management that goes with it).
I thought that global warming was going to kill wifi?
Doesn’t that mean that these smart meters will stop working when we need them most?
\sarc
It’s encouraging to see the number of commenters who treat the rubbish about “benefits to the consumer” with the contempt it deserves, and rightly worry about the implications of this kind of system.
I’m envious too that you live in a place where the discussion of privacy actually extends to things like “smart” snoop-and-control systems. Here in the UK, the only time you’ll ever hear the word “privacy” on the British Brainwashing Corporation is in the context of this or that celebrity (I use the word as loosely as they do) trying to cover up some – usually sexual – indiscretion. No mention is ever made of, f’rinstance, the serried ranks of databases selling one another our information, and the only recent mention of CCTV is the current Bill to “regulate” it: this turns out to mean, not (as one might hope) the reining in of the ubiquitous infestation of this intrusion, but ensuring that all the equipment is good enough to ensure that the authorities get more and better forensic detail of our lives. Truly, you are lucky.
Oh, and DocD, that “kindly hacker” … I like your style, Doc, I really do. 😀
Zeke Hausfather,
Your entire premise is based on the false belief that PG&E cannot price electricity higher during the day or in the summer, thus your argument in favor of smart meters fails. The public will reduce their KWHs if they know rates are higher at certain times.
There is no excuse for installing these intrusive meters. It is just too easy for government to misuse the enhanced snooping capability. Government is a necessary evil. But it is still evil, and the information collected by these new meters will eventually be misused.
Hi Rhoda,
Infrastructure investment is almost always expensive, and any fiscally responsible company is going to try to avoid them whenever possible. Here in Florida, during the mid 1980s when the utilities were more tightly regulated, there was a requirement to have a 10% “spinning reserve” for electric utilities. A spinning reserve is on-line generator capability over and above the consumed power. This mitigates any failure in the power system, such as a generator unexpectedly going off-line.
As regulation weakened, the electric utilities cut the spinning reserve to save infrastructure investment. This also allows the utility to save fuel costs for unused surplus electricity. As I understand it now, Florida has somewhere between 5% and 2% spinning reserve. That means any interruption in electric generation now results in black-outs.
The whole smart energy thing allows utilities to have finer control over energy consumption during generation-outages events without resorting to blackouts. It also allows less infrastructure investment and fuel costs for unused electricity. Keep in mind that lower costs do save consumers money too; at least theoretically ;).
The move to smart meters is another facet of Obama’s move to create an Orwellian National Socialist State for the benefit of an elitist corporate -political- ruling class.
The whole CO2 – warming scare has been a useful tool towards that goal.
For example the Boxer – Kerry and Waxman – Markey bills represented the greatest threat that America’s constitutional democracy has ever faced.
Anthropogenic (CO2 caused) Global Warming was used as a pretext to try to grab control of all economic activity in the country because congress would decide the price of all energy and therefore economic activity via the distribution of carbon credits to whomever contributes most to their campaign funds. Energy production would be diverted to so called “green ” sources which are hopelessly uneconomic unless heavily subsidised.
If the bill had passed the Senate all private real estate would have essentially ceased to exist because Obama’s climate police under the bill as written would decide the appraisal value of all real estate and thus control the sales price of everyone’s home. Any alterations or improvements would have had to be approved by government inspectors.
A vast bureaucracy was proposed to be created to run this virtual totalitarian police state run for the benefit of the congress and whichever corporations or special interests pay them the most.
It is more and more likely that the earth is entering a 20 – 30 year cool spell during which crop production will be seriously reduced at a time of increasing population. Obama’s policies which dictate and subsidise increased ethanol production ,for the chief benefit of Archer Daniels Midland corporation, and Presidential candidates in Iowa, even at a time of enormous deficits, would greatly exacerbate this problem and worsen the worldwide food shortages which might well occur if the cooling actually develops.
The main stream media have mainly aided and abetted this vast transfer of power to the politicians and corporations -in some cases , e.g. NBC, – Time Magazine because they were controlled by a company – General Electric which spent millions on lobbying in order to benefit from the Waxman bill or because of the political (Socialist – world government ) agenda of its leaders e.g . BBC. NPR PBS
It is essential that the grass roots of working middle America become informed about this looming threat and come together to speak out and stop this takeover by a kleptocratic and self appointed elite who plan to be the rulers of this National Socialist state .
The smart meter scam is designed and promoted by companies like GE and Microsoft who hope that their politician agents require that everyone pay for the manufac ture and installation of all the metering equipment and for a whole new generation of appliances which have the necessary controls and possibly Wi Fi connections so that another whole aspect of life can be controlled for their profit.
It is getting late in the day to stop all this. The Government’s finances have been taken over by Goldman Sachs – largely for their benefit and the whole jobs issue is now in the hands of GE.
LOS – Loss of (heartbeat) Signal (from infrastructure equipment) results in automatic disconnect … b/c this is a SMART meter (maybe not immediately, but after a day, maybe two or three; long enough to get on the ‘work list’ of some bloke whose responsibility it is to check up on those meters not responding to a ‘ping’).
.
Meanwhile, in the UK, apparently the utility companies are already ‘forced’ to spend £45 per year per customer telling them how to Save Energy. Next, these Smart Meters are scheduled to come in at £340 each by 2020, but if they’re less than £1,000 by then, I’ll also be The King of England.
Recently, some group or another tried to highlight that it thought CCTV cameras in the UK were effectively photographing everyone about 300 times per day.
“Oh no” cries Chief Constable Plod, “CCTV cameras only photograph everybody 70 times per day”
Ah well, that’s alright then.
Just today, Plod is fighting an FoI request about covert cameras recording car number plates here in the UK.
Story from MSN UK… http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=157439330&ucpg=3#uc2Lst
It seems that there are 10,000 hidden cameras reading every car number plate that goes past them.
In the UK, that is one camera for every 5 miles of road.
Somebody somewhere is paranoid, or what……
This involuntary installation of wireless meters networks is happening everywhere globally, almost at the same time. When it comes to Smart meters, there are a number of serious substantiated and scientifically proven health issues involved here, in addition to the upending of constitutional rights to privacy.
That said, the vast majority of people voluntarily subject themselves to RF and EMF pollution in the name of convenience all the time, from domestic and office WiFi wireless networks to microwave cell phones held against the head to high gig satellite portable phones placed all over the house to microwave ovens. Few make the connection between convenience and risk.
Ironically, for those who have avoided RF and EMF microwave pollution as possible, this involuntary exposure is justifiably felt to be even more of an invasion and a theft of not only privacy but health.
And for those with cancer? More so.
Smart meter co-option of ones house wiring is effectively a way of becoming blanketed inside the ultimate WiFi enclosure cage, one of nearly 7 times the microwave intensity which one would experience living near to a cell tower.
Even with the repellent privacy issues aside, could they have done so in a safe manner for a bit more money? Absolutely. Fibre optic upgrades, or even the use of one’s phone line’s copper wiring would have made the scheme for wireless transmission irrelevant. Wireless was simply cheaper from a corporate perspective. Everywhere Energy Acts have been passed in order for Smart Maters to move forward en masses, legislation rendering involuntary the acceptance of the installation of these meters and deeming the entire wireless issue to be legally irrelevant to human health.
Ironically, there seems to be a great degree of candour and “save-the-planet” acceptance of a metering network inside the green movement.
Many remain remarkably unquestioning or even endorse the primary intention of this device. A large number of self identified greens do not take issue with the intended purpose of this house network system, indeed they approve of the fact that smart meters are MEANT to be linked together, designed to share data, intended to feed data to about 1 meter in every 1000 meters, even more powerful meters placed on certain homes that are designed to receive data those other meters installed on the surrounding houses. So smart meters are designed for and MEANT to be used for surveillance of energy and house activity purposes. They most certainly are not about energy savings.
That these meters have an output which can be significantly amplified within a certain distance of sell phone towers and other devices, that they can cross feed and interrupt other devices, that they have been known to fry circuits, cause house fires, interfere with medical devices, is of no corporate concern. That not-so-Smart meters can be readily hacked, and that they also are a very effective way to monitor the comings and goings of house occupants is seen by some as one of the perks, at least for those who control and endorse the use of that data, legally or otherwise.
That this is an invasion for those who are under the microwave microscope is irrelevant from a corporate perspective. Smart meters, as I understand it, are a UN implemented global initiative which effectively overrides national sovereignty and bypasses dozens of constitutional and legal issues. In co-opting one’s house wiring and using it for microwaves data surges which exceed cell phone tower levels many times a minute this also violates private property issues. Sure the power corporations do own the meters. Does the power company also own your house wiring? Maybe…