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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 these things potentially harmful?
They are every bit as dangerous as cellphones.
> 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?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Our water meter was just replaced with a digital one that transmits to the Powers That Be. I thought it was pretty cool. The display has a photo sensor so it only comes on when you shine a flashlight on it (it's in the basement). Our reported monthly water usage is also lower since we got the new meter... I can only assume it's more accurate.
Under CISPA, if it passes the Senate, the government can see any private corporate record it desires. Including your smartmeter electrical usage.
Even without CISPA, governments or govt-controlled utilities at the state level have passed laws mandating rolling blackouts. So your A/C could suddenly shutoff and you'd get nice and toasty. (I prefer dumb meters that *I* control without any communication back to the central entity.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Serious question: If you wrap your smart meter in tinfoil (or for purposes of this argument) lead, what happens?
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I remember reading one news story where a property owner was saying he considered anyone coming onto his property to be a violation of his rights and might shoot someone from the power company if they tried to install a smart meter. I wish I could have asked him how the power company reads his meter right now?
Stupidest person ever.
Given the amount of TV signals, cell phone signals, microwave Telecom signals, police, fire, ambulance, taxi radios, the cummulatinve radiation of millions of electronic goods, the RF from the power lines themselves, is the addition of a smart meter really going to make a difference? Or is this just a cynical way by people who oppose them to get the public to rally against smart meters.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
1. The power company (very likely) already knows your power consumption habits. Lots of meters send automated reads every 15 minutes anyway. This is not new, at all. The processing power and manpower to actually mine this data does not yet exist, and if power companies wanted to put this in the pipeline they'd have to spend bazillions of dollars doing so.
2. The EM radiation emitted by smart meters (especially those in the 900MHz range) is comparable to a cell phone, except for the fact that it's not placed directly against your ear, and it chirps for a few ms every few minutes, as opposed to constantly against your head
The crazies who spout nonsense about cancer and privacy are of the same sort that believe in homeopathy. You will notice that they don't cite their sources, and make generalized, unsupported claims.
There is a proof of concept showing that the use of smart meters could reveal television usage
OH MY GOD!!
This is an outrage! I mean, it's not as if anyone driving by your house in a properly-equipped van can already know what you're watching by picking up the frequencies emitted by your TV receiver's local oscillator or anything...
Oh, wait a minute...
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Don't forget the biggest source of hazardous radiation: the sun.
> 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.
argument as the fear portion of FUD.
The RF is safe. Any controversy about that is manufactured in PR room, or stupid peoples heads.
The privacy "concern" is a policy issue. One that is way overrated.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If by 'safe' you mean doesn't put out a harmful amount of RF, I would guess the jury's out on that one
No, RF is well understood. If it's non-ionizing, it's not harmful.
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. . . if you remove them while they are running.
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.
Yeah, it is obvious the power company in intent on stealing secrets about your laundry habits rather than trying to balance infrastructure cost and capability.
Those sons-a-bitches should quit trying to provide you with better service and let you live in peace. Call and tell them to disconnect you from the grid altogether. Install PV on your roof and keep those nosy power company bastards at bay!
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We're not talking about radioactive fluid (ionizing radiation). We're talking about non-ionizing radio frequency waves. The sun produces more of those than all your electronic equipment combined, and with a shorter (more energetic) wavelength to boot.
Cell phone radio waves are used for carrying voice. This means that they are analog in nature and are therefore sine waves. Now sine waves are by their very nature are curved. This means they are easily able to flow over and around DNA and other molecular structures such as proteins. This is not the case for digital computer or in this case Smart Meter WiFi EM radiation. The data computer WiFi radiation carries is digital in nature and therefore only has two values 1 and 0. This means that it is transmitted as a square wave with a flat instead of a curved leading edge. As a result it is not able to easily flow over and around a cell's DNA but rather slams into it at several hundred thousand times a second. This is like a hammer hitting a string of pearls over and over and over. Eventually the pearls and the string will break.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
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
So, I used to write server software for one of these companies, and I'd say the biggest concern is the corners they're cutting in order to get a product to market. Having an internet aware electricity grid is a terrible, terrible idea, especially when the leaders of these organizations are businessmen/women that don't understand the underpinnings of technology. It isn't a matter of if hackers will eventually be able to monitor, track, and use this information against customers (e.g. Hitting homes that have significant drops in usage while they're out of town) it's when. Furthermore, several of these meters have a remote IP enabled shutoff - can you image the havoc that could be wreaked when the encryption and authentication software in these meters is outstripped by new technologies? This is all worst case scenario stuff, and it isn't like these companies aren't always doing their due diligence; it's just that I feel social engineering and/or actual hacking makes this seem like an inevitable outcome.
" I would guess the jury's out on that one,"
no, it isn't. It's safe. The only people saying it isn't is dimwits and people looking to create a fake "controversy"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Though I have no idea regarding the RF tx concerns, I can speak a little about the privacy implications. first a little reading, Here is a link to the NIST-IR 7628, which describes guidelines for smartgrid security. Volume 2 focuses on privacy impact. http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/focus-on-countries/north-and-south-america-and-the-caribbean/united-states/trends-and-issues-united-states/information-and-communications-technology-united-states/cyber-security-united-states/nistir-7628-guidelines-for-smart-grid-cyber-security.html
it is already possible with analog meters to identify devices inside a home, simply by sampling the signal at the meter at an interval of less than 2 minutes. the faster the sample the more accurate. by comparing the signals to a database of common electrical devices researchers were able to profile device usage as early as 1992. obviously, up till now, most utilities coudn't afford the staff to sample most lines at that interval however.
The smart grid exacerbates this privacy issue, because it allows and in fact requires high speed sampling to accommodate Time-Of-Use billing, and because the meters can send usage information to the utility head end effortlessly with no additional cost.
the real issue with privacy however will not come for a few years: smart appliances. Several EDUs are already selling internet service through their smart meters, but there is effectively no option to firewall this connection as it travels over the power lines and any interference would be felony meter tampering.
So, imagine 5 years from now, you are buying a new TV. you don;t care about internet connectivity, but the device comes with it embedded, and there are very few options in the TVs menus for configuring it. It uses powerline networking, so in order to just turn it on, you have already connected it to the Internet. At this point, you basically have to trust your TV manufacturer to not report to advertisers what you watch, including stuff like pr0n. with SMART devices you have to trust the manufacture implicitly..
Another big focus for the smartgrid is Electric Vehicles. The plan at present is to have the car identify itself to the power network, along with its owners billing info, so that wherever you plug in to get a recharge, it appears on your monthly bill. this can easily be used to track you over long periods of time.
SG meter data can also be used to uncover hidden sources of power generation within your property, so if you hide your usage to maintain your privacy, that will likely be accessible to any adversarial party that requests it.
So, a well monitored smart meter can be used to tell your schedule, the size of your family, when you are home, when you are away, your approximate worth, enumerate your devices, log how/when/where (in your house) you use them, track your internet usage, how far you travel each day (and possibly where you went), the day of the week you go to the grocery, and what ever any device you plug in decides to send to third parties, all with no indication that anything is happening.
Let's see:
Compared to being hit by sunlight:
param. .Water Meter ..Sun
energy. ..0.1 watts. .300 watts .1 sec/month .1 hr/day
exposure.
photon energy . 6E-25 Joules.. 3E-19 Joules
Looks to me like that Sun is DANGEROUS, exposing you to about 3,000 times more energy per unit time, for about 110,000 times longer, and with individual photons 500,000 times more energetic.
The 900MHz radio wave photons are so weak they can't excite any atom to any higher energy level, or cause any kind of chemical change, not by a factor of 1000 or more.
The headline ends in a question mark, but the answer is "Yes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
I have a really awesome aluminum hat that protects me from the meters as well as other government mind control efforts. Everyone should have one.
http://zapatopi.net/afdb/
Fail, fail.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Privacy? Are people going around reading your meter to blackmail you? If they are going to collect significant evidence on you they will need to take a lot of data set. (A car parked outside your house may be a warning sign). Without it, I probably could have got inside help from someone in the power company. To get a lot of this data... Really it isn't a big deal, there are other ways where you can dig up more dirt on a person. In a world where we have automated devices and timers... It is really hard to get any information about a person. I can set dishwasher to start up to 8 hours after I set it up. I get up to 2 on on my washing machine, and 4 on my dryer. So in terms of power usage, I can make it look like I am home while I am not there. You are better off watching for lights.
Bank Account? Back in the old days I was charged for an additional 2000kwh of power. Because my meter was misread.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
One of the things coming with smart meters is differential rates for electricity provided during peak and non-peak hours. I don't see this as a bad thing, but then I don't run an air conditioner. Setting my dishwasher to run after 9:00 am makes sense, for example.
The idiots prattling about RF sensitivity seem brain damaged to me, but not from RF. Around here they mostly move around in a fog of pot smoke.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Of course there's no dangerous RF. That's just plain stupid.
However, with regard to invasions of privacy... The meters are capable of reporting daily variations in consumption of electricity. Readable at a distance, a third party could assess when consumption levels are very low (house probably unoccupied) or inconsistently low for several days in a row (occupants probably away on vacation). So, what you basically have is a radio beacon that lights up "Rob us, were out".
I imagine that this could be fixed if there is a very good encryption and authentication/authorization scheme -- but how likely is that?
Finally, after years of lurking, a subject I can speak with authority on.
I actually got to speak to a Georgia House committee on the subject of smart meters, since I work for one of the major manufacturers. Here are some of the things I told them...
Our meters use licensed 900Mhz FSK (not spread spectrum) bursts. An average electric meter transmits 6 times a day with 1 watt EIRP (off a PCB antenna in the meter), in bursts of about 180ms. Total on-air time is nominally 1 second per meter per day.
As for privacy, we use symmetric AES-256 encryption with per-meter keys for both uplink and downlink to the meters (our meters are twoway-capable). Keys are rotated generally every three months (yes, imagine rotating 4+ million encryption keys every few months, over a system with an aggregate bandwidth of about 12kb/s).
We sell a "remote-disconnect" option in our meters, but it's expensive and only used by electric companies in limited situations. While we can trigger a remote disconnect, in the interest of safety we cannot re-energize a meter without a very complicated dance. Instead, we send an arm-for-reengize command, and then tell the consumer to take their TV remote control outside and point it at the meter and hit the "POWER" button. An IR receiver in the meter face then causes the meter to re-energize.
One of the big complaints (after they get past the RF) of the anti-smart meter groups is the use of "dirty switching power supplies". According to the anti-smart-meter web sites, these switching power supplies cause surges on the AC mains, which somehow increase cancer risks up to 13 times. The power supplies in our meters are actually certified under 3 different FCC type ratings, and are somewhere north of 95% efficient buck-boost supplies. Since the load of the metrology and RF boards in the meter is minuscule, smart meters generally only draw milliwatts while running, and the chances of inducing large spikes onto the mains is non-existent.
I got to meet some of the people behind the anti-smart-meter campaigns. For the most part, they're nice elderly ladies who get their view of the world from Pat Robertson and Fox news. They crave some cause in their life, are experiencing health issues generally related to aging and unhealthy choices, and find any new technology (especially hard-to-understand, mandatory-use technology like smart meters) scary and use it as a good scapegoat for their health worries. Everyone here realizes that a web page is the ultimate printing press, and with enough Googling you can find some "expert" pushing some kind of "science" to support pretty much any view you wish to cling to. It's embarrassingly easy to put together a semi-literate sounding alarmist web page backed up by flaky pseudo-science and gather like-minded people to your way of thinking.
Bottom line is, as an electrical engineer, an extra class amateur radio operator, and a father, there are about a million things my kids run across every day that are more damaging or dangerous than smart meters. Most of those are naturally occurring (sunlight kills more people in a year via skin cancer than every smart meter I've ever played a part in will kill in a thousand years). If you need something to stress about or blame your poor health or weird medical condition on, please find a better scapegoat than smart meters.
I think most of the others have already covered the RF side of things, so I'll discuss the privacy aspects. First of all, I do realize the meters have fairly high resolution when it comes to usage so there are some privacy concerns. Keep in mind that just because the meter can tell exactly what channel you are watching in a lab environment, it doesn't work that way in the real world. No utility has the desire to store data at that level of detail. The utility I work for will store data with 1 hour resolution. That means we will know how much power was used during a specific one hour interval. This alone has enormous storage and server requirements. Going to smaller intervals would do nothing for us and compound or storage requirements so it's a non starter. We are a for profit company and have no cost justification for that kind of system. We are also not storing customer information in the same system that we are storing meter data. The system storing meter data will just have a service delivery point so the data can be tied to a customer, but it raises the difficulty level.
As far a remote shutoff goes we are working very hard to make that system as secure as practical. Those commands will be considered privileged and limited to a small group of people. There will also be limits in place so it's not like I could issue a command to shut off 100,000 customers all at once. The security is being handled in a very similar fashion to how we handle our SCADA security where a couple of key strokes can actually shutoff decent sized parts of the grid in our service territory. Needless to say at my utility we are taking your privacy and security very seriously.
So in a nutshell with one hour resolution what could someone lean about you? Well your usage patterns would give some stuff away. Probably the same sort of stuff your neighbors already know. Daily habits such as what shift you work and what time you tend to go to bed at night and what time folks get up in the morning. That being said if your utility gives you access to your data via a portal, I would probably use a fairly decent password and not share it with the world.
No doubt the people worried about the RF from their smart meter talk about it on their cordless phones for hours on end.
You get wrapped up in an arrest warrant for Theft of Services - and placed on a permanent list of suspected pot growers.
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.
Actually, this is the entire idea behind the smart grid. The data is not for them to know how much to generate - as you pointed out, they already know that. The idea is to charge you more for the electricity that costs them more to generate. Not all power is generated equally cheaply. On a hot day with lots of A/C usage, they have to bring emergency generators on line. These burn very expensive fuels, such as natural gas, and cost them 10 times as much as the electricity generated by the much cheaper coal fired plants. They want to bill you a lot more for the times they're forced to bring those extra generators on line, because if they charge you more, you might change your mind about consuming electricity that's so expensive to produce. So the smart grid will use consumer demand to reduce their need to supply.
The smart meter's job is two-fold. One task is to record your usage depending on the rate. The other is to transmit the rates to your smart household appliances. This would be messages like "the current non-peak rate is $0.16/kWh" or "the peak rate from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM will be $3.25/kWh." If you have smart appliances that can read these messages, they can make their own decisions. You might configure your clothes dryer to run only when electricity is cheaper then $0.50/kWh, for example, meaning it would shut itself off during the really expensive peaks. Or you might configure your water heater to hold 140 degrees at $0.35/kWh rates, but 110 degrees at rates above that. This would give you the ability to make your own choices about placing peak demands on the power grid. You would think about if you really need 50 gallons of 140 degree hot water at 5:00 in the afternoon if it's going to cost you $7.00 extra per day.
The idea is simple: get people to cooperate to consume less energy. They've proven they won't do it for the environment, but they will do it for money.
John
For me, the real dangers with smart meters, are coupled, big-data style data collection followed by well-targeted demand pricing. Remember the 'concept' Coca-Cola machine that made drinks more expensive when it was hotter?
Also, and I made a submission in the UK about this, I'd like the raw data stream to be available on the 'consumer' side rather than patronising LCDs with smiley and frowny faces, for example. The UK suppliers currently seem to believe that this is 'their' data exclusively, because, of course, as above, it's very valuable.
I'm pretty unconvinced that the RF, for example, is worse that all the other techno-**** that we have around us, already.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
You know it isn't that hard to tell if someone is home or not while driving past your house, smart meter or not installed, right?
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If you have smart appliances that can read these messages, they can make their own decisions. You might configure your clothes dryer to run only when electricity is cheaper then $0.50/kWh, for example, meaning it would shut itself off during the really expensive peaks. Or you might configure your water heater to hold 140 degrees at $0.35/kWh rates, but 110 degrees at rates above that. This would give you the ability to make your own choices about placing peak demands on the power grid. You would think about if you really need 50 gallons of 140 degree hot water at 5:00 in the afternoon if it's going to cost you $7.00 extra per day.
The one I'm waiting for is being able to tell an electric car to charge overnight at $0.10/kWh, and discharge into the grid at $0.20/kWh on-peak when I get home from work. If you apply the "what if everyone did that?" test to that, it would really kill the usage peaks the power companies have to deal with now.
That link really doesn't demonstrate the answer to the question of "how will they read power consumption down to the device level"?
No, but this one does.
Basically, the meters read (or at t least, can read) the power consumption to a very fine degree of accuracy every 2 seconds. That's enough to figure out what TV channel you're watching (by watching power fluctuations caused by varying brightness levels of the TV). And with that level of detail it would also be fairly easy to make good guesses at: what time you leave for / get home from work (lights/kettle/coffee machine/cooker); when you're in the shower; how many people are in your house; whether you're on holiday... it all starts to get creepy pretty quickly...
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Yes, we know conclusively that they put out less than one watt (generally much less than one watt) of non-ionizing radiation in the ISM band, around 902 MHz, or possibly a few milliwatts in the 2.4GHz band, depending on the tech inside it. They are fully compliant with Part 15 of the FCC rules.
They don't need high power transmitters because they communicate to a local neighborhood "concentrator" operated by the utility, and if they can't reach it directly they can arrange themselves using mesh networking to bounce the signal from meter to meter - up to 5 hops. Furthermore, they only communicate periodically, transmitting for only a second or two at a time a couple of times per day.
Even the ham radio operators aren't concerned about the potential for interference with their gear, and they're the first ones to raise a stink when someone starts talking about deploying a ubiquitous new RF-based technology.
There is no known safety risk associated with exposure to these low levels of RF radiation.
John
My father used to have a Hamm's obsession, but then he got to liking Schlitz better.
LCD TVs dont have mesurable power fluctuations due the changing colors/brightness, only CRT have it (dont know about plasma ones).
dont forget that you have many measurement noise and small fluctuations, the more electronic you have, the higher the noise.
but as i have one current-cost meter i can map my energy usage all minutes/hours/days/weeks/months its very interesting to see the many power usage changes and map then to various actions... several of then i can now easily guess what i was doing at that time.
Higuita
LCD TVs dont have mesurable power fluctuations due the changing colors/brightness
Are you sure? Modern LCD TVs adjust the backlight brightness according to the image displayed, in order to improve the contrast, and this does appear to be measurable.
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not the new LED ones, that already have a very high contract and where LCD power is already low enough to be hard to detect fluctuation over the reading noise
older ones that used that "optimization" might be detected, but even that, only a few models used that, so its too much guessing
Higuita