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I follow the researcher on TikTok, whilst I enjoy his work this article is a big nothing burger. Each individual ERCOT customer is able to access fine grained m

I follow the researcher on TikTok, whilst I enjoy his work this article is a big nothing burger. Each individual ERCOT customer is able to access fine grained meter data *of their own meter*, not the meter data of others. If everyone is so concerned about what the meters actually say Texans can volunteer their data for the purposes of this research. Since the meters broadcast in the clear I would not be surprised if war driving becomes standard practice for the retail electricity providers. Yes that's right. When you sign up with a REP they don't know your habits: how much power you're actually going to use or when. Having historic meter data is a competitive advantage in building your pricing models. I'm getting really tired of people who have no idea how the system functions in Texas making strong assertions based on errors and sweeping generalizations from journalists that don't have a clue how things work either. I have two U.S. ISO's, multiple REPs, and a large generator as clients. I know people on the board of ERCOT and get the back story on everything, especially things the public will never hear about. This business has nothing in common with anything you've probably read unless it comes from industry insiders.

djanogo 5y ago
Sort of agree, the only "secret" in this case is how long the meter has been up?, I assume they can mitigate the "hack" by just rebooting RF part of the meter randomly? (I only say this because I read they have remote capability to reboot zigbee feature) I know they stopped accepting zigbee device pairing starting this year, and only allow authenticated API based requests which is delayed by 24 hours. Right now there is no way for customer to get real time data from the meters themselves.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  I think this is interesting not necessarily in a security sense, but more in a "wow, you can do that" kind of sense. Also considering how distribution companies have refused to provide this data, you'd think it would be harder to obtain.
- BitBangingBytes 5y ago
  There are two radio’s in the meter, one for zigbee and one for the 900MHz mesh that sends this data back to power company. The zigbee side isn’t used at all here anymore, they killed our ability to view our usage with it.
adolph 5y ago
You know people still on the board of ERCOT? http://www.ercot.com/committee/board http://www.ercot.com/committee/board Contact Information Chair: Vacant Vice Chair: Vacant
- ryanmarsh 5y ago
  Yes. The chair resigned to take the fall for the legislature’s failure to create appropriate regulations and adequate enforcement framework for ERCOT.

djanogo 5y ago

Sort of agree, the only "secret" in this case is how long the meter has been up?, I assume they can mitigate the "hack" by just rebooting RF part of the meter randomly? (I only say this because I read they have remote capability to reboot zigbee feature) I know they stopped accepting zigbee device pairing starting this year, and only allow authenticated API based requests which is delayed by 24 hours. Right now there is no way for customer to get real time data from the meters themselves.

jackson1442 5y ago
I think this is interesting not necessarily in a security sense, but more in a "wow, you can do that" kind of sense. Also considering how distribution companies have refused to provide this data, you'd think it would be harder to obtain.
BitBangingBytes 5y ago
There are two radio’s in the meter, one for zigbee and one for the 900MHz mesh that sends this data back to power company. The zigbee side isn’t used at all here anymore, they killed our ability to view our usage with it.

adolph 5y ago

You know people still on the board of ERCOT? http://www.ercot.com/committee/board http://www.ercot.com/committee/board Contact Information Chair: Vacant Vice Chair: Vacant

ryanmarsh 5y ago
Yes. The chair resigned to take the fall for the legislature’s failure to create appropriate regulations and adequate enforcement framework for ERCOT.