I went to a presentation by DONG Energy [1] where they were discussing how, with their in-progress upgrade to remote-reporting, per-residence electric meters, t

I went to a presentation by DONG Energy [1] where they were discussing how, with their in-progress upgrade to remote-reporting, per-residence electric meters, they can soon infer all sorts of things about people's apartments and daily habits from the distinctive patterns of electric usage. Not just aggregate usage like inferring when someone's awake or asleep, but in much more detail based on the distinctive patterns different devices make. They do seem sensitive to privacy fears (perhaps partly because the regulatory climate forces them to be), but the level of detail they were able to get out of the electric data in a prototype system was quite eye-opening. They had some ideas about using it for consumer self-education, e.g. feeding it back into a small display near the meter that would make energy-saving suggestions. But even that could get creepy, because it could make suggestions about specific devices you owned, when you never told the energy company that you owned them! [1] An unfortunate acronym, from Danish Oil and Natural Gas