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Ask Slashdot: Are Smart Meters Safe?
An anonymous reader writes "There is a lot of controversy and a big hullabaloo about Southern California Edison and various other utilities around the country installing smart meters at residential homes. Various action groups claim that these smart meters transmit an unsafe amount of RF and that they are an invasion of privacy. The information out there seems rather spotty and inconsistent — what do you engineers out there think? Are these things potentially harmful? Are they an invasion of privacy?"
In Europe, they're being investigated as a privacy issue:
Hi-tech monitors that track households' energy consumption threaten to become a major privacy issue, according to the European watchdog in charge of protecting personal data.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has warned that smart meters, which must be introduced into every home in the UK within the next seven years, will be used to track much more than energy consumption unless proper safeguards are introduced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/01/household-energy-trackers-threat-privacy
I'll be these folks lodged some of their complaints over a mobile phone. And none of them use garage door openers, or keep track of their kids at the mall using FRS radios... argh. If they don't like the idea of remote meter reading, fine-- that's one thing, and a valid discussion to be had. But unsafe RF levels ? Are you KIDDING me ?
- Marching Band: It's not just for breakfast anymore
Not only is there no evidence that these meters are harmful, but the effect of radio frequency exposure upon living tissue (approximatly none) is well-studied and understood. These radiophobes have about as much scientific respectability as the anti-vaxers, homeopaths and creationists. They are a parody of science.
Can you editors please present the article submitted with a decent summary and leave off the inflammatory questions tagged onto the end? This trend has been getting worse as time goes on...and the answer to these questions is usually the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
> Are they an invasion of privacy?
Of course. They are telling the power company how much electricity you are using. What business is that of theirs?
While it's definitely the power company's right to know how much power I'm using, and even to know in aggregate how much peak versus non-peak power I'm using, but they really shouldn't need to know hour by hour or minute by minute (or even day by day) how much power I'm using.
They already have instrumentation at the substations that tells them how much power my neighborhood is using so they know how much power to generate, they don't need to know when I'm doing laundry, when I go to work, when my house is vacant because I'm on vacation, etc.
This property owner fellow needs to do more research on easements, encumbrances, and fee simple property titles. Property ownership is not as simple as most hillbillies think it is.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
There's only one thing in this article that seems like a legitimate concern:: the issue with possible incorrect bills and an issue I didn't really see raised: the possibility of unauthorized access/tinkering.
The lady whose electric bill shot up 300% ... either she was somehow not being billed for the power she used all along, or else the new meter is faulty. THAT is a legitimate concern.
However, I am sick to death of all these whiny whiners and their "I'm allergic to RF" .. NO. No, you're not. You're not special, you don't have some super power that lets you receive radio waves... you're not experiencing something that science or big business is covering up... you're being hypochondriacs or else you''ve got Munchhausen's syndrome. Either way, you sure as hell don't experience RF sensitivity - not unless you're talking about the power levels inside your microwave oven.
rabble, rabble!
The Digital Sorceress