Just Say No to Big Brother’s Smart Meters by Orlean Koehle
Hydro One has policies in place that prohibit it from selling customer information to third parties. But the pressure for third-parties to access power-usage information will only increase. Many companies are working on new products — electric vehicles, smart appliances and energy-production systems like solar panels — that have the potential to take advantage of the smart grid's two-way communication system to send usage information from individual appliances and devices to a central office where it can be accessed by the utility or by the user. Whirlpool Corp., for example, announced in January it would produce one million smart appliances by the end of 2011 and make all its appliances smart grid-compatible by the end of 2015. Device-specific information would be useful to the consumer to get credit, for
example, if they were feeding electricity back into the grid from solar panels or a windmill. Some appliances could adjust their own energy consumption according to the time of day or by monitoring what other appliances were running in the home. This kind of information could help make a home more efficient in terms of energy
consumption, but it would also be tempting information for marketers, governments and even thieves. The Future of Privacy report suggests that extensive information could be gleaned from the grid — everything from when you shower or watch TV to which appliances and gadgets you have in your home, and when you use them. The report urges that any third-party access to the information should not be a deal between the utilities and the third parties, but between the consumers and the third parties. As well, third parties should agree not to correlate data with data obtained from other sources or the individual, without the consent of the individual. "There always needs be a policy to provide levels of protection, or at least transparency, about how the data will be used," says Christopher Wolf of the Future of Privacy Forum. "It's not the technology that's bad, it's the use of the technology." Stevens says it's hard to predict how smart appliances and vehicles will interact with the grid. For example, in the future you may be able to plug your electric vehicle into a friend's meter and, by keying in your code, have it billed to your account. This system could make it easier for a person's whereabouts to be tracked, but right now it's just an idea.
"It's not that we're not thinking about it — it's just that we don't build cars, so we have to watch the car makers to see where they're going," says Stevens. "We can't start building functionality because we don't know the requirements at this point." Ontario
privacy commissioner Cavoukian has been calling for companies,
governments and other agencies to build their information systems with privacy as the default mode. "If privacy is to live well into the future, we can no longer rely on regulatory compliance. Smart privacy is about having a whole arsenal of protections. That includes having regulations, but they're not going to be enough for the future." (
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/09/smart-grid- electricity.html#ixzz18xnNVMRK)
Wired Smart Grids and Smart Meters – Would They be any Better? The following article was sent from Mary Beth Brangan of The Ecological Options
Network, "Documenting Solutions,"
www.eon3.net. It states that in some cases, wired grids and meters might be used, where the RF transmissions would be out of range for smart appliances. Mary Beth thinks this would be a good idea and asks why isn’t it being done?
However, Deborah Tavares and I and many others do not want smart grids and Smart Meters under any circumstances, wired or not. Deborah states, “Either way we lose our freedom and our energy cost will skyrocket. This smart grid program is simply
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