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There are plenty of rational reasons for not wanting a smart meter. Don't let the irrational people detract from the fact that there are many real problems with

There are plenty of rational reasons for not wanting a smart meter. Don't let the irrational people detract from the fact that there are many real problems with smart meters. Especially lots of privacy issues. In the UK, I report my own meter readings and the electrical company probably only really ever goes out once every few years when tenancies change. So I actually don't see what money it saves them asides from the money lost from chasing up issues where people are trying to cheat the system. In this example it really makes me wonder if replacing all the meters in the country with non-intercompatible smart meters really saves that much money. So you have to start asking what else is in there for them to do this. Probably money for the data I would have to imagine. Also, given how absolutely atrociously shite the security of these smart meters is (and you'll have to trust me on this, I don't know how public this information is) I wouldn't want that crap anywhere near my house in the eventuality that someone hijacks it to make it look like I'm using more electricity when they're using less (while keeping the overall books balanced so to speak) or some other nefarious purpose. Certainly these meters won't give you 5G cancer, but they're really a horrible idea as they stand and I don't recommend anyone install them, at least not in the UK.

labcomputer 5y ago
Sure, but those not-irrational reasons are locale-specific. I've never heard of someone self-reporting the meter reading here in the US. The meter still keeps a local log of how much energy was used, so worrying about being framed for using too much energy still feels a bit irrational to me. OTOH, smart meters allow the utility to charge TOU rates, which helps even out the load on the grid. It benefits the utility, of course, but also customers. For example, it is minimally inconvenient to set my car to charge or my dish washer to run at night instead of day, but I might not bother to do so unless the utility charges me below average rates to do so. I calculate that I am earning several hundred dollars per hour for the time spent taking advantage of TOU rates. As for selling the data... the solution to that is banning such sales, not banning smart meters.
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  If a smart meter gets hacked it's not unreasonable to imagine the local logs are compromised. This is a bit like all the arguments against voting machines but in a less concerning setting. TOU rates are a thing you can get with pre-programmed meters. They may not benefit the utility company as much as tailored rates but they probably have 90% of the benefit while having 0% of the privacy implications. The companies don't even have to sell the data, they can just mine it for information, such as which rate to automatically put you on once your contract finishes to make the most money out of you etc.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  I just don't want the timing of my electricity consumption to end up being used as evidence against me for growing cannabis. Feels pretty rational from my perspective.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Or, have them raid your house on the suspicion of growing MJ, when you’re doing a crypto coin (or something similar; folding proteins?)
idiotsecant 5y ago
What sort of horrible privacy issues do you suppose your smart meter has? You already tell your utility how much power you use.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Data aggregated per month is very different from data aggregated per hour or per minute. You can infer far more personal information from the latter.
  - supernova87a 5y ago
    I think it's only a matter of degree. And at every level someone can complain. So where do you draw the line? Watching a meter spin or reading it once a month you can tell if someone is on vacation. Isn't that equally private and personal information?
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      It is a matter of degree, but that degree is not small. Anytime you decrease the interval, you need to justify the commensurate loss of privacy. You can't just handwave away these concerns like posters in this thread are doing. A rough inference of which months might involve vacations (data about which is probably already being sold from other sources) is far less invasive than a daily record of your sleep cycle. With the lack of privacy laws in the US, it is pretty much a given that this data will be sold as soon as the private utility companies in the US start collecting it.
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        ...You say from your personal wiretapping device.
        shkkmo 5y ago
        Which I have the ability to choose when/if I am survieled by by leaving it at home or throwing it in a river.
supernova87a 5y ago
There's not that many things about the smart meter that are much worse than the vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter. There were many problems with old meters too. And the benefits far outweigh those issues. Smart meters are not being hacked left and right. And your privacy concerns are just a matter of granularity of time. You report your usage monthly -- that is also private information. Smart meters just do it on a finer timescale. Not a fundamental difference. Anyway, back to the main topic.
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  The vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter may have been bad but they couldn't be exploited remotely from someone else's house. Yes, granularity of the measurements IS a problem. If these things only reported the readings when I pressed a button, I would not be so concerned about privacy (that is if the companies could prove to me that the meters did not report the readings outside of these times).
ashneo76 5y ago
I don't trust private companies doing anything "smart". I say this as an electronics and software engineer. Companies doing have our best interests in mind. Want to refute that claim? Show me the source code then
- LambdaComplex 5y ago
  And, even if they do show you "the source code," how can you be sure it's the code that's actually running on the device?
softveda 5y ago
In Australia, in the state of Victoria all meters are smart meter for few years now. They are also growing in number in other states. There has been no hacking incident. in fact it makes peoples life easier by allowing them to track energy usage at every 15 mins interval with historical data using an app from the utility company. This data cannot be sold either. In fact under the Govt. Open API scheme very shortly you will be able to give access to your own data for comparison to select the best plan for you (just like open banking).
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  So sounds like Australian smart meter companies are better at security than British ones. The energy usage tracking can be done without smart meters, in this country electricity companies (and lots of private companies) offered induction clamp based electrical usage logging devices. These may not have been quite as accurate as onboard measuring but this could have easily been solved with some kind of serial protocol exposed on the meter which a third party datalogger could attach to. The ability to track energy usage is not a feature of a smart meter, it's just a feature of having access to the meter's data, this data could always have been made available even if the meter wasn't networked. Open banking is a complete disaster that I seriously don't think deserves the name "open". I still don't understand how an API which requires you to be a BANK to be able to interact with can remotely claim to be open but having tested some of the implementation for banks it's some horrific over-engineered mess. Let's hope the data access API for your meter doesn't require you to be an electricity company to access it. As it stands, in the UK, meters are not intercompatible between utility companies so if you switch providers (which I do annually) the old smart meter just becomes a dumb meter again.
  - WolfRazu 5y ago
    I'd like to point out that ever since SMETS2 new (and some firmware updated) smart meters are compatible in the UK, although I do acknowledge they didn't used to be.
  - QasimK 5y ago
    Arch-TK I absolutely agree with everything you are saying, and I don’t intend to get a smart meter myself for as long as possible. However, you are incorrect that meters are incompatible between utility companies. You are right that SMETS1 meters _are_ incompatible. However, all new meter installations are SMETS2 and these are fully compatible between energy companies. SMETS2 has been the standard for a number of years now. There are still old SMETS1 installations still active though.
gerash 5y ago
When it comes to smart meter security and privacy (and perhaps in this day and age diversity and equity) concerns let's discuss them when there's an evidence that they have caused problems.

labcomputer 5y ago

Sure, but those not-irrational reasons are locale-specific. I've never heard of someone self-reporting the meter reading here in the US. The meter still keeps a local log of how much energy was used, so worrying about being framed for using too much energy still feels a bit irrational to me. OTOH, smart meters allow the utility to charge TOU rates, which helps even out the load on the grid. It benefits the utility, of course, but also customers. For example, it is minimally inconvenient to set my car to charge or my dish washer to run at night instead of day, but I might not bother to do so unless the utility charges me below average rates to do so. I calculate that I am earning several hundred dollars per hour for the time spent taking advantage of TOU rates. As for selling the data... the solution to that is banning such sales, not banning smart meters.

Arch-TK 5y ago
If a smart meter gets hacked it's not unreasonable to imagine the local logs are compromised. This is a bit like all the arguments against voting machines but in a less concerning setting. TOU rates are a thing you can get with pre-programmed meters. They may not benefit the utility company as much as tailored rates but they probably have 90% of the benefit while having 0% of the privacy implications. The companies don't even have to sell the data, they can just mine it for information, such as which rate to automatically put you on once your contract finishes to make the most money out of you etc.
InvertedRhodium 5y ago
I just don't want the timing of my electricity consumption to end up being used as evidence against me for growing cannabis. Feels pretty rational from my perspective.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Or, have them raid your house on the suspicion of growing MJ, when you’re doing a crypto coin (or something similar; folding proteins?)

idiotsecant 5y ago

What sort of horrible privacy issues do you suppose your smart meter has? You already tell your utility how much power you use.

shkkmo 5y ago
Data aggregated per month is very different from data aggregated per hour or per minute. You can infer far more personal information from the latter.
- supernova87a 5y ago
  I think it's only a matter of degree. And at every level someone can complain. So where do you draw the line? Watching a meter spin or reading it once a month you can tell if someone is on vacation. Isn't that equally private and personal information?
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    It is a matter of degree, but that degree is not small. Anytime you decrease the interval, you need to justify the commensurate loss of privacy. You can't just handwave away these concerns like posters in this thread are doing. A rough inference of which months might involve vacations (data about which is probably already being sold from other sources) is far less invasive than a daily record of your sleep cycle. With the lack of privacy laws in the US, it is pretty much a given that this data will be sold as soon as the private utility companies in the US start collecting it.
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      ...You say from your personal wiretapping device.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        Which I have the ability to choose when/if I am survieled by by leaving it at home or throwing it in a river.

supernova87a 5y ago

There's not that many things about the smart meter that are much worse than the vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter. There were many problems with old meters too. And the benefits far outweigh those issues. Smart meters are not being hacked left and right. And your privacy concerns are just a matter of granularity of time. You report your usage monthly -- that is also private information. Smart meters just do it on a finer timescale. Not a fundamental difference. Anyway, back to the main topic.

Arch-TK 5y ago
The vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter may have been bad but they couldn't be exploited remotely from someone else's house. Yes, granularity of the measurements IS a problem. If these things only reported the readings when I pressed a button, I would not be so concerned about privacy (that is if the companies could prove to me that the meters did not report the readings outside of these times).

ashneo76 5y ago

I don't trust private companies doing anything "smart". I say this as an electronics and software engineer. Companies doing have our best interests in mind. Want to refute that claim? Show me the source code then

LambdaComplex 5y ago
And, even if they do show you "the source code," how can you be sure it's the code that's actually running on the device?

softveda 5y ago

In Australia, in the state of Victoria all meters are smart meter for few years now. They are also growing in number in other states. There has been no hacking incident. in fact it makes peoples life easier by allowing them to track energy usage at every 15 mins interval with historical data using an app from the utility company. This data cannot be sold either. In fact under the Govt. Open API scheme very shortly you will be able to give access to your own data for comparison to select the best plan for you (just like open banking).

Arch-TK 5y ago
So sounds like Australian smart meter companies are better at security than British ones. The energy usage tracking can be done without smart meters, in this country electricity companies (and lots of private companies) offered induction clamp based electrical usage logging devices. These may not have been quite as accurate as onboard measuring but this could have easily been solved with some kind of serial protocol exposed on the meter which a third party datalogger could attach to. The ability to track energy usage is not a feature of a smart meter, it's just a feature of having access to the meter's data, this data could always have been made available even if the meter wasn't networked. Open banking is a complete disaster that I seriously don't think deserves the name "open". I still don't understand how an API which requires you to be a BANK to be able to interact with can remotely claim to be open but having tested some of the implementation for banks it's some horrific over-engineered mess. Let's hope the data access API for your meter doesn't require you to be an electricity company to access it. As it stands, in the UK, meters are not intercompatible between utility companies so if you switch providers (which I do annually) the old smart meter just becomes a dumb meter again.
- WolfRazu 5y ago
  I'd like to point out that ever since SMETS2 new (and some firmware updated) smart meters are compatible in the UK, although I do acknowledge they didn't used to be.
- QasimK 5y ago
  Arch-TK I absolutely agree with everything you are saying, and I don’t intend to get a smart meter myself for as long as possible. However, you are incorrect that meters are incompatible between utility companies. You are right that SMETS1 meters _are_ incompatible. However, all new meter installations are SMETS2 and these are fully compatible between energy companies. SMETS2 has been the standard for a number of years now. There are still old SMETS1 installations still active though.

gerash 5y ago

When it comes to smart meter security and privacy (and perhaps in this day and age diversity and equity) concerns let's discuss them when there's an evidence that they have caused problems.