Residential utility customers have a legitimate expectation to preserve individual and behavioral privacy with regard to energy-related or water consumption data collected by the utility. Credible government reports and security experts have explained that there are privacy concerns that the granular data collected by smart meters will reveal the activities of people inside of a home by measuring their usage frequently over time. Furthermore, there is deep concern that inadequate cyber security measures surrounding the digital transmission of smart meter data will expose such data to misuse by authorized and unauthorized users of the data. Residential utility customers have currently only surrendered a privacy interest to the extent necessary to account for monthly billing by the utility, unless otherwise explicitly granted. Normally, only one energy or water usage measurement per month is necessary for the billing process.
I always come back to this:
The problem isn’t the technology, the problem is that the technology isn’t sufficiently regulated.
If we have real privacy regulation in the US and the EU (the EU is at least starting to take things seriously but still has a lot of regulation written by lawyers instead of technicians), we might be able to implement this kind of technology without these kind of fears, because there would be severe penalties for using consumer data in such a way.
Because the reality is, spying on consumers isn’t the only reason companies are moving to a smart-grid type setup, and it’s because it gives them a lot more real-time data about how their grid is functioning and where inefficiencies lie. That’s a good thing, and it’s just a bonus in their eyes that they can also spy on the energy use habits of their customers.
If we had strict regulation of that kind of data, we might not be in such a position to have to worry about such services, because we could rest easy knowing if they were caught doing such a thing, that their asses would be nailed to the wall.
Of course, that also means we would have to solve certain aspects of corporate governance that allow individuals to avoid going to jail due to “incorporation.” No, that shit has to stop, too. We can’t let these rich asshats hide behind their corporate coffers for their wrongdoing because you can’t put a business in jail. So if a business is a person, give it the damn death penalty and nationalize that shit if they’re caught fucking with consumer data.
Anyway, just my two cents. It’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s how it’s used, and how there effectively isn’t any legislation and regulation to prevent its abuse.
If I could trust an authority to create effective regulation, and trust the company to follow it, then I wouldn’t mind the technology itself.
I personally don’t buy that personal meters provide much more useful data about grid performance than if the continuous meter was placed further up the line (maybe at junctions and transformers?). To me, the risks far outweigh the benefits. The push for these individualized meters is really unsurprising though, since it provides far more financial benefit to them if they can measure each user’s energy use and tailor pricing to that individual. Even if they could guarantee that data never left the utility, its existence is still problematic just by the nature of the oppositional relationship between utility and the user.
And if we knew they weren’t massive fucking liars.
I get a quarterly energy report stating I use 50% more energy than “other comparable homes”.
After looking into it, “other comparable homes” is houses ±300sq ft, and within 6 miles.
What it’s not compared to is my neighbors, who’s houses are built exactly like mine. I’m in a development of 100 units.
So why would they compare me to places anywhere from 30% smaller to 30% larger, rather than units where I am (so identical weather conditions), and near same construction? Never mind that 30% smaller, and within six miles, would include apartments/townhouses/row homes in the city, where temps average higher in the winter, and often have steam heat (provided as part of the building) because they’re old.
Because it doesn’t support their end goals.
Thankfully though, they did cause me to measure everything in my house, and read all the neighboring meters. Turns out my consumption is anywhere from 20% less than others to about the same. My neighbors run their AC far more than I do.
50% more than the average, my ass. Lying pricks.
The problem is we live in America, where “self-regulation” is the rule.
They can’t get away with lying when it comes to well-crafted and well-enforced regulation. America just doesn’t want to do it partially because of the revolving door between Regulators and Regulated. If you work for Verizon for 15 years as a lawyer and then move on to be, say, the Chair of the FCC, it’s pretty fucking valid to question whether or not you’re actually working in the interests of the citizens.
In America, that exact issue was treated as a nothingburger, so much so that the man in question made a “comedy video” making fun of the idea that he was still working with Verizon’s interests in mind. We let corruption flow so much in the USA, the elites literally joke about it like they’re not rubbing it in our faces.
There are ways to organize governance that prevent this, and you just happen to live in a country where laws like that are a non-starter because all the politicians and regulators are paid off and owned by the people being regulated.
USA is a fucking racket, top to bottom. That’s the issue.
Liars can’t lie if they’re forced to regularly prove what they’re doing and have to bring evidence and have to prove that evidence hasn’t been tampered with.
Sounds similar to my experience with my electricity provider.
deleted by creator
There’s some real conspiracy theory stuff going on over at that site. I had coworkers that used to swear that smart meters put off more radiation than cell phone towers and were all going to die of cancer.
This was all pre covid and I really haven’t heard anything about it from him since. Probably because there are juicier conspiracies to latch onto now.
I don’t know anything about that site, only that there is a real threat to privacy enabled by continuous power monitoring.
I can’t speculate on radiation (i’m doubtful), but smart meters are absolutely a threat to personal privacy. Not to mention predatory, since continuous monitoring could be used for surge pricing.
Agreed. I remember my mom tripping out about these a while back, and so I did some digging. Precursor: I am but a humble resi/commercial/industrial electrician, not a lineman or POCO employee.
There are a couple different configurations of these meters, typically one way broadcast RF and bidirectional RF. These use the same (or similar) frequencies as cellular networks. The bidirectional meter connects to a neighborhood gateway, which then transmits back to the POCO, while the broadcast meters (like my local utility) transmit a low range signal that’s picked up a truck with a receiver driving through a neighborhood to collect usage information (and doesn’t require the meter reader to walk up to each and every meter and physically read them). These are primarily used for efficiency and labor cost reduction. Obviously, the one way broadcast meters are not being read in real time, only the meters that are connected to the POCO through a network connection.
These meters only read the overall usage in your home or business, not individual loads. They are situated in line on both phases (or all 3 in a commercial environment) between the utility feeders and your main breaker (or through a current transformer for mains that are too large for a regular meter, but it effectively does the same thing), measuring the current flowing through them, and, through Ohm’s law math (Watts=Volts*Current, Watts/1000=kW), reports usage. The only way to determine individual loads without extra equipment/monitors is through inference (which is actually pretty easy to due to the trained eye; for instance, when sizing generators, I’ll run a power monitor for a few days to a week to gather load data, and it’s fairly easy to surmise what spikes are what based on typical patterns and time of day). Some (read: very few) meters could do what’s called load shedding (aka turn things off) to reduce demand on the grid, but even the few meters that have this capability are only able to disconnect your home/business entirely. Some utilities are offering incentives to allow high-demand appliances (ie air conditioners) to be managed by the utility, but outside of using utility-connected thermostats, they would rely on a separate load management module that is directly connected to the appliances they wish to control (and only then, it would be a simple on/off; this is where thermostats are preferable, because the POCO can stop Suzie from cranking the AC down to 60 and running like a stockcar when its 115F out, and set it to 78 to bring overall demand lower while not cooking her like a holiday roast). It’s important to remember here that every single electrical appliance is physically connected to the grid via hardwire. There is no wireless electricity (for anything useful or practical pertaining to this conversation). It is possible to use powerline networking to control appliances, but that would require these appliances to be equipped with a communications module to respond. Electricity is pretty dumb; it flows wherever there’s a free path of travel.
Also, there is no benefit to the POCO for turning any of your stuff on and off aside from load management for the wider grid. If anything, they’d prefer you using electricity that they can then charge you for.
The only real concern I could see with these is a nefarious actor having access to your real-time usage to determine your habits. I guess the argument can be made that the POCO is spying on you, but I really don’t see a benefit to them knowing your usage aside from network/grid management. Perhaps a locality can use this data to determine if you’re growing weed, but other than that, in a world where all of our information is harvested anyway, it seems pretty inconsequential to me. if you’re that concerned, get a solar/battery system and turn off your main breaker.
The only real concern I could see with these is a nefarious actor having access to your real-time usage to determine your habits. I guess the argument can be made that the POCO is spying on you, but I really don’t see a benefit to them knowing your usage aside from network/grid management. Perhaps a locality can use this data to determine if you’re growing weed, but other than that, in a world where all of our information is harvested anyway, it seems pretty inconsequential to me. if you’re that concerned, get a solar/battery system and turn off your main breaker.
That, and be able to adjust billing to surges.
The secondary concern is reading the real-time usage by a nefarious actor, which has proven to be useful to ML applications for intuiting what types of activities are happening on the circuit. Obviously this pales in comparison to the potential abuse allowed by smart NICs and modems, but as a secondary measure or where a user is obscuring their network activity with encryption or similar, a real-time power reading would be helpful too.
It’s just another vector that enables possible abuse, and one that you don’t have any choice over. My utility installed one of these on my house this year and we were not given any choice.
It’s important to remember that POCOs are highly regulated, and they’re not allowed to frivolously charge whatever they feel like, even in high demand conditions (probably state-dependent, but that’s at least the case here in CA).
ML applications
What do you mean by that?And I see where you’re coming from. At this point in the world, where just about every data point about a person/household is tabulated and used in ways to coerce you to spend more money, I just feel like this is low on the priority scale. The utilities’ motivation for smart meters is mostly labor cost reduction (meter readers). The remainder is real time grid load monitoring and statistics that better enables them to manage surge generation to keep costs down. This comes from a family friend that’s a higher up in SoCal Edison. They legit don’t care if someone is using an industrial grade sex machine or growing weed (though the municipality might). The biggest issue I can see with this, like anything else and as you alluded to, is data security/privacy.
That the “smart meters are dangerously radiactive” garbage was spread by people who wanted to cover up the fact that they’re a massive invasion of privacy, by making everyone opposed to them look crazy, is my kind of conspiracy theory.
Residential utility customers have a legitimate expectation to preserve individual and behavioral privacy with regard to energy-related or water consumption data collected by the utility.
That’s so cute. Here is a list of 3rd party scripts that load when I pay my bill:
seg.js
I may expect and want privacy, but I’m under no illusion I have it.
You mean regulation isn’t allowing the corporation to say “trust me, bro!”?
Smart metering has been a thing in Nordics for past 20 years, and it has enabled per hour pricing that guides electricity usage away from peak hours (you have to build the network/production for the peak consumption, which is a problem).
This is pretty nonsense rambling.
What US of course needs is proper privacy laws. Electricity usage is protected by GDPR in EU, so it would be illegal for anyone else than you and your grid operator to see your consumption.
Privacy laws here in America are about as real as the American Dream. We’re more likely to see Jesus return from Heaven, walking on a stairway made of clouds than to see actually useful privacy laws. We’re more likely to see the rich elite willingly giving up all their wealth and power before we get privacy laws.
Seems like a bit of a reach to go from knowing which appliances you use and when, to identity theft and harassment by your landlord.
Besides, I feel like even if your landlord was able to get this info (in the US, utilities are surprisingly protective of account access), they’d be able to do much more just by virtue of having physical access to the property.
The burglary or home invasion angles I can see, but it actually working out like that seems extremely unlikely.
I don’t think this is high priority from a privacy perspective.
