[ddub47]

The small island I live on is scheduled for smart meter installations this summer. This is a very controversial topic it seems. Many islanders have signs forbidding installation and some have even gone so far as to install collars on their analog meters to prevent the swap. Some islanders are discussing picketing the ferry to keep the installation trucks off the island.

I have been trying to educate myself on smart meters and have only been able to find articles by the power company or articles by what appears to me to be serious nutbars. Does anyone have some links to some balanced information about these smart meters?

Derek Ward, Hornby Island B.C.

[onoway]

It seems to come down to whether or not 1) they will indeed result in sufficient savings to justify the cost and 2) you trust your power companies and the government to limit the information they collect to that they tell you they are collecting - and if you consider even some of that (at precisely what times you used how much water or power) any of their business. Several places have put the brakes on after climbing enthusiastically aboard, according to Wikipedia. Australia had mandated all meters be replaced with smart meters and now is backing off for another look, at least one European country is doing the same,saying that the benefits to the consumer have not been realized and the costs higher than forecast. (Isn't this generally the case?)

Apparently smart meters are not able to work "with" any other power such as solar as the present meters are, so a building partly off grid can't get credit for any power it feeds back into the system when it has excess. Not something that affects many people but still something to consider when they are being promoted as good for consumers.

They say they are tamperproof but people are already promoting a number of suggestions as to how they can be subverted. If you have a couple of dozen people designing something and maybe several thousand or more around the world actively looking for ways to mess it up, I'd bet on at least one or two of those trying to mess it up being able to find a way to do it. So then you will have increased costs when the companies have to upgrade to counter and fix things.

There is also the not inconsiderable concern about privacy issues once they are installed. The possibilities of gathering information other than what they say they are collecting is something to be considered. Although some people feel that they needn't complain as they have nothing to hide, that is decidedly not the point. There is a reason why such things as needing search warrants and innocent until proven guilty have been put into effect. The present government may be all you could possibly hope it to be but once privacy is totally gone there will be no getting it back when some government in the future may not be so benign. There have been some health issues raised as well.

Here, my electrical bill last month was as usual higher for the "privilege" of being connected than it was for the power I used, so I can't see that smart meters would do anything for me but cost me money and privacy.

[hrothgar]

FWIW, I've done some work with smart meters, both on the embedded side as well as the analytics.

Here's a simple description of the value proposition for consumers / utilities

1. Traditional energy meters are able to record aggregate power consumption over time, however, they don't track power consumption as a function of time.

2. Currently, power consumption patterns are extremely bursty. Everyone gets home from work at 6:00, they turn on their computers, crank up the AC, run the dishwasher, the television, etc. Energy demand goes through the roof. In a similar fashion, everyone and their dog is asleep at 3:30 AM. Power demands are very low.

3. Bursty demand cycles create very real expenses to society. In an ideal world, if power demand was perfectly flat every day we could fulfill all of our energy load using baseload generators and achieve significant cost savings. In practice, we need a combination of baseload and surge capacity.

The best way to handle this problem is to adopt dynamic pricing systems by which the amount of money that you pay for electiricty changes based on the total demand on the system.

Long term, you'll probably see systems in like the following:

When you drive home and plug your Toyota hybrid into the wall socket the car won't automatically start sucking down power. Rather, your car will talk to the electric company and determine that it won't start recharging until 2:38 AM. You're neighbor Bob's car won't start recharging until 4:35 AM. The electric company will play some fancy games to coordinate the recharging schedule for 1,001 different types of appliances trying to achieve optimal load balancing.

When you push "run" on your dishwasher / washing machine / some other power hungry appliance you'll give explicit instructions that the device shouldn't run unless the cost of power is less than $X per kilowatt.

In theory, in the long run this system should result to significant cost savings to society as a whole. People will be able to make more intelligent decisions about energy consumption...

In practice, if you roll out a differential pricing scheme without providing the necessary information for individuals to adjust their behavior appropriately you're going to have all sorts of problems.

[blackshoe]

Old navy saying: "you can make it foolproof. You can't make it sailor proof".

[mikeh]

I've seen the wingnut propaganda to which Derek refers, and it is truly out-there. It always amazes me how worked up so many technologically illiterate people get about these kinds of things. They do their cause more harm than good, since many people will toss out the nuggets of legitimate concern along with the barrage of obvious delusional nonsense. However, even worse is the ability of some of these wingnuts to do real harm....look at the anti-vaccine wingnuts in both Europe and N. America.....diseases such as whooping cough are back in force n some areas.

Privacy: I am all for privacy, but we already let the power utiltity know how much power we consume! And remember....this is power that the utility, be it government owned as here or private as in the US, is selling us...not, for most of us, power that we are generating.

The sales pitch for the smart meter is, as Richard noted, that ultimately it will enable the informed consumer to make choices that reduce individual and societal costs.

Power generation is a contributor to global warming, not least because so much of it is generated in environmentally harmful ways. Building, operating and maintaining the power grid, from generation to consumption, is costly in financial and environmental terms.

We cannot, or should not, imo, place our desire to be as private as possible over our need to at least try to reduce the damage we do to our economic and planetary environments.

I don't care....and I don't see why anyone should care.....if the power company knows the pattern of electrical consumption in my house....they already know the amount per month, after all. if I have a grow op going, they can already see that At least when my generators aren't working.

Meanwhile, my laundry equipment and my dishwashers (yes, we have two....since we have a suite) are all programmable so that we can delay operations. If the smart meter programme ultimately means that by programming these devices to run at 3am I save money and society gains by reducing the need to cater to power surges, this is a win-win.

I am very familiar with programmes that started with promises of increased effiencies and convenience and that turned into costly failures, but this one looks to have a chance of working...so i support it.

[onoway]

It's hard to imagine anyone at all doesn't already know when the peak loads for power happen. I believe that already in some places even without the smart meters, there is a lower cost for power used at those times. So why is it important for the power company to know precisely what you are doing when? Do you really want the power company to decide when you can do a laundry or wash your dishes? Or have to reset the parameters you set so that you can do them when you want?

If you already have timers that you aren't using ,then I don't understand why you should suggest that smart meters are the way to go, as clearly power usage is not of major concern to you. If you ARE using them then it's hard to see what smart meters will do for you that you cannot do for yourself. Here the projected cost of the meters is considerably more than the cost of a couple of timers to run things.

[hrothgar]

 onoway, on 2012-January-27, 18:43, said:

I believe that already in some places even without the smart meters, there is a lower cost for power used at those times. So why is it important for the power company to know precisely what you are doing when?

How, pray tell, are the utilities able to bill you for power consumer during a peak load period without a smart meter to measure this?

Please recall:

Traditional meters allow the power company to measure the total power consumed at over a period of time.
Smart meters allow the power company to measure the power consumer at any given point in time.

[hrothgar]

 onoway, on 2012-January-27, 18:43, said:

It's hard to imagine anyone at all doesn't already know when the peak loads for power happen.

People may know when peak loads occur, however, they aren't going to change their behavior without price discrimination.

[onoway]

 hrothgar, on 2012-January-27, 19:13, said:

How, pray tell, are the utilities able to bill you for power consumer during a peak load period without a smart meter to measure this?

Please recall:

Traditional meters allow the power company to measure the total power consumed at over a period of time.
Smart meters allow the power company to measure the power consumer at any given point in time.

You may have a point here. I had not realized that smart meters had been around for that length of time as I heard about such programs in place a long time ago, I would guess about 10 years or so.
In any case, there is a quantum leap between knowing when you use x amount of power and having the smart meters monitoring your individual appliances.

[onoway]

 hrothgar, on 2012-January-27, 19:24, said:

People may know when peak loads occur, however, they aren't going to change their behavior without price discrimination.

Not sure it's quite that simple. Certainly people change behaviour for reasons other than money. The blue boxes for home recycling at least here don't offer any financial incentive yet most people seem to use them. Certainly the community recycling boxes for cardboard and such which definitely don't offer any financial reward are actively supported although it actually costs time and money to drive to them.

That said, there are still people who toss beer bottles out into the ditches and such and there is a financial reward for returning the bottles. Enough people toss returnable bottles that some homeless people have routes they travel to collect them for some cash. You could say that the behaviour of the homeless people has changed but not that of the actual consumer.

When the financial incentives come into play, often it seems to be when something takes a huge leap upwards, not so much if there is a possibility of a relatively minor saving of what is already spent. If you take tobacco as an example most smokers (the ones I know anyway) were appalled when a pack of cigarettes slid over $5 as they used to be able to buy cartons on sale for less than that. Now a pack of cigarettes here is well over $10 and they are still smoking. For sure some have quit (the ones who wanted to quit anyway, generally) but certainly not all. Gas prices are another thing; people didn't really change driving habits a whole lot until fuel cost almost doubled within a few months.

So to be effective, the basic cost of energy would seem to need to take a huge leap upwards to generate much change in consumer behaviour. The shareholders of the utility companies would like that, consumers not so much. I suppose that's the rallying cry of the smart meter proponents, that the utility companies could take over the responsibility and do it for them. I (clearly) don't believe in companies or governments taking over my choices, even if I am making less than optimum ones.

[kenberg]

An analogy may help:

Recently the ICC (InterCountyConnector) opened. It's a useful EW toll road a bit north of the Washington Beltway. You use a Smartpass (or just drive it and they snap your photo and send you a bill for the toll plus a small service charge) and the rates are time dependent. Sort of like a smart meter, I guess.

I suppose I could envision that my wife has a friend at Smartpass who monitors when I visit my mistress, and certainly that friend has to be dealt with, (I'm joking, Becky, I'm joking) but all in all I am fine with it.

About privacy: It is a serious concern, I think. In a local lecture series on genealogy I tried to get information about my father between the time he arrived in the U.S. in 1910 and when he married my mother in 1923. I came up blank. Frustrating for me, but we might all envy the anonymity that was then possible. One joker in the class suggested I contact the Witness Protection Program.

[hrothgar]

 onoway, on 2012-January-28, 11:39, said:

I (clearly) don't believe in companies or governments taking over my choices, even if I am making less than optimum ones.

You're more than welcome to pay whatever kind of suboptimal prices you want, just don't ask me to subsidize you...

As I mentioned before, baseload generation is MUCH MUCH cheaper than provisioning for spikes in consumption patterns.
Smart Meters provide the necessary infrastructure to properly bill individuals for the true costs of their consumption patterns.

This isn't about making evil evil profits or screwing the consumer. (Most utilities are monopolies. They are perfectly capable of screwing you over without smart meters.)

The Smart Meter initiative is simply a way to make the pricing schemes more efficient.
FWIW, some people who are benefiting unfairly from the current system will be made worse off by the new system.

I don't have much sympathy for them.

[onoway]

 hrothgar, on 2012-January-28, 13:12, said:

Smart Meters provide the necessary infrastructure to properly bill individuals for the true costs of their consumption patterns.

Fair enough. Track the times of usage. Just don't come INTO my house.

[hrothgar]

 onoway, on 2012-January-28, 13:27, said:

Fair enough. Track the times of usage. Just don't come INTO my house.

As far as I am aware, the meters get installed in precisely the same spot as the existing ones.

With this said and done, there is a fairly simple way to skin the cat...

Let whomever wants get a smart meter installed.
Calculate their usage patterns, divide the remainder of the peak power loads across all of the analog customers bills based on their aggregate consumption patterns

Of course, this will quickly lead to self selection problems:

Customers who don't consumer much power during demand spikes will switch over to the Smart Meters and their bills will reflect this.
Customers who don't switch over will see their bills increase enormously.

But, at least they won't have to have a Smart Meter installed...

[onoway]

The point is not where the meter is installed, obviously. The point is that effectively you have them IN your house when they are communicating directly and seperately with your appliances. That's the part I object to. I don't see that it's anybody's business if your TV took x amount of power at 9:00pm or your dishwasher took y amount of power at 2 am. All that the power company needs to know is that at 9 pm SOMETHING took x amount of power; it's none of their business what. Then there is less possibility of them garnering other information which is where the rabid objections come in such as the utility company tracking what tv shows you watched for example, which would seem a very simple step since you are monitoring it already. Or maybe sending subliminal messages through the tv when you have it on (just thought of that one .)Or what your printer was used to print. Maybe even what phone numbers left messages on your answering machine. You can get as paranoid as you like but as they say, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there isn't any hazard.

The sort of information being gathered just because it CAN be gathered, is already way beyond what most people think. Some of the marketting software out there can profile most people almost to the name and colour of their dog and sometimes even that. Most houses are likely shown on Google earth, in the event someone cares to check it out. If you want to find out what's going on at an address, you don't need to watch a house now, set a video camera facing the computer screen. Big Brother is definitely already here, but no need to invite him into the house.

[hrothgar]

 onoway, on 2012-January-28, 14:54, said:

The point is not where the meter is installed, obviously. The point is that effectively you have them IN your house when they are communicating directly and seperately with your appliances. That's the part I object to. I don't see that it's anybody's business if your TV took x amount of power at 9:00pm or your dishwasher took y amount of power at 2 am. All that the power company needs to know is that at 9 pm SOMETHING took x amount of power; it's none of their business what.

Outside of a few "concept" beta's I'm not aware of any appliances that currently communicate directly with the utilities.
With this said and done, its only a matter of time.

From the sounds of things, you place a high premium on privacy.

Personally, I value convenience a lot.

I don't want to have to serve as an intermediary between myself and the electric company.
I don't want to constantly monitor the spot price of electricity in real time to determine whether this is a good time to run the dishwasher.
I'd much rather be able to program the dishwasher with a set of preferences and have it act in an intelligent manner.
However, this requires direct communication between the utility and the dishwasher.

Overall, I expect to be able to save a fair amount of money through such communication. It really doesn't worry me that the utilities will be able to track what appliance is doing what. Especially since the utilities will be able to infer all of this regardless of what I want. All the major appliances in your house have pretty distinctive power signatures when they turn on and off. If I can watch your power load in real time, I can pretty much tell what appliances are running regardless of whether I am communicating with them directly... (Isn't software cool!)

[blackshoe]

"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine. It spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because… I built it." -- "Mr. Finch", in "Person of Interest".

[sallyally]

Where I live the smart meter system is just coming into effect. We have had the meters for a very long time and have had one false start but the system has now started in earnest. The dishwasher and washer/dryer will not be on in the household in peak times. Other than that I don't know what else to do to keep my use of hydro to a minimum. Things like the power bar for the tv - the cable digital box, etc. are on all the time.

Anything I have heard or read indicates that the cost of hydro increases when the smart meter goes into effect. I will know that with our next billing. We will be able to monitor our times of use on the hydro website.

[onoway]

 blackshoe, on 2012-January-28, 18:44, said:

"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine. It spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because… I built it." -- "Mr. Finch", in "Person of Interest".

You might find this an interesting TED talk
http://www.ted.com/t...ine_attack.html