Seeing Through Your Walls: Smart Grid Has Great Potential For Insight into Home Life
The Smart Grid is coming. Its first steps are in the form of smart meters being installed in homes around the nation. Some of the installations come with extensive energy use surveys that collect information on what time do you go to work, what time do you come home, what day to do you do laundry, How often do you microwave your dinner, etc. The smart meter records and transmits electricity usage from the home every 15 minutes and coupled with the answers provided by home owners a lot of intimate details about home life is being shared with utility companies for the first time. Arriving in the energy usage information arena are companies who would like to know about your energy use for what they say is to "help" you better manage your electricity consumption. Watch out for the fine print regarding what else they might want to use your home energy consumption information for such as sharing it or selling it to advertisers who will want to selling you everything from takeout food, to home appliances. When you turn on an appliance and how long it stays on communicates something about you and your lifestyle that others might find very valuable. Privacy, consumer, and civil liberties organizations are working hard to protect the rights of consumers. The struggle is to establish fair information practices for all smart grid personally identifiable information that does not rely extensively on the failed "notice and choice" model favored by businesses.
Smart Grid Data: Too Much For Privacy, Not Enough For Innovation?
Jeff St. John, earth2tech.com
