Science
The Great Smart Meter Con

The Great Smart Meter Con

Smart meters plague utility customers with real troubles and mythical bogies. Here’s how to separate fact from fiction. ...
Rebecca Terrell

As taxpayers, utilities, and rate payers continue to pump billions into modernization of the electric power grid, controversy rages over the evolving “smart” technology that makes it possible. While proponents praise it as ushering in efficient grid management and cybersecurity, others warn that the “smart grid” is nothing less than a tool of the surveillance state that government uses to destroy liberty and privacy.

In the cross hairs of an attack are smart meters, digital devices that replace traditional automated utility meters at individual homes and businesses. Like their conventional cousins, smart meters measure electric power usage, and some record gas and/or water use, too. Utilities prefer them because they provide two-way communication between the meter and main recording station. They can be read frequently, improving accuracy in recording electric power use, and they are read remotely, without utilities sending a person to document each measuring device in the network. The National Association for Amateur Radio states that smart meters also reduce costs by alerting customers to ways they can conserve energy and by allowing utilities to pinpoint times of peak demand and resolve outages and service problems more rapidly.

But the other side of the coin, opponents say, is that government can spy on and ration your energy use by means of these digital meters. During the 2015 California drought, for example, bureaucrats used them “to catch citizens consuming more than their government-approved water rations,” as Alex Newman reported for The New American. In what amounted to warrantless search and collection of data, Long Beach Water Department General Manager Kevin Wattier bragged, “We are using it specifically for an enforcement tool to go after those customers who we’ve gotten lots of complaints about,” and to fine them for using more than their “fair share” of water.

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