Smart metres are a con

[Kimbomc]

Keep hearing adverts about companies providing them for "free". They are not being provided for free, offgem has given them permission to put up bills to cover the costs of these. They are not that useful, I have an owl device that took seconds to install and gives much of the same information for 20 pounds. Smarts cost hundreds to install (I heard 200 on radio 4) and would allow people to cut off the supply remotely or limit it. Plus g4 have been given the contract to mine all the data people with smarts will supply to them.

A smart metre will allow a random person in a control centre to monitor your energy usage, know your address, and work out when you are on holiday or out at work.

If G4S are involved, we'll all need extra triple security every time we leave home.

Luckily only if your with BG.

G4S awarded £150 million meter reading contract by British Gas
utilityweek.co.uk/news/g4s-awarded-163150-million-meter-reading-contract-by-british-gas/758302#.VeyDahpwbMI

I'll leave more of a trace, but I have got a few IT precautions up as well. Your mockery does nothing to promote a low-privacy lifestyle, Egosum, neither does your irrational belief that because i am forced to accept some online tracking that I should be happy about being forced to accept further privacy invasions in the name of private profit.

Smart meters do an awful lot more than allow the companies to read the meter once a month from outside. They collect very fine-grained data and are remotely reprogammable.

Full thread here: Anyone having a gas/leccy meter replaced with a Smart Meter? Something you need to know

Not only have the consumer and security issues not been solved since that thread 4 yrs ago, but smart-meter promoters have come on MN and insisted there can't ever be security problems "because of encryption."

Yeah, MN's data is encrypted. But strangely we got hacked anyway. Including a social engineering attack on an admin.

Encryption protects you from a very limited number of issues. It's all the other issues that will be the problem. Including the behaviour of utility companies themselves.

How does my dislike of having a smart meter (like I said I won't actually get a choice) incur extra costs for the company? They're managing so far. Will it dent their profits a little (rather than other users subsidising me as would happen in a publicly owned enterprise), awwhhh poor dears.

Their profit will be gained by selling all this information on.

Here's an article from Computing in 2014 about the rollout: m.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2321742/smart-meters-an-it-disaster-waiting-to-happen

And from this year:
m.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2402055/smart-meters-a-costly-mistake-and-it-disaster-waiting-to-happen-institute-of-directors

The majoy annoyance is us smart people who refuse these silly things will end up paying higher bills for an expensive device to both install and run. No one is really stupid enough not to know that a long shower uses more energy, noone will reduce usage .

The reason they are pushing these is to give them more control and carry on ignoring the energy shortage that's been known about for decades .

Incredibly, technology CAN tell which device you've switched on - monitors are available in the shops today.

Eg Smappee Energy Monitor:
" Via a single monitor, smappee measures your precise household energy consumption and recognises your appliances to ensure you're on top of how much you're using. The single smappee sensor is attached to the main power cable and records the flow of energy. Your various appliances are identified by their energy signature or the electrical traces they leave behind. Once installed, you can use the mobile app - available for free download from the App Store - to monitor your energy consumption and switch devices on and off remotely."

I seem to remember you can actually identify which film someone is watching: energy use changes between dark scenes and light ones.

No one is really stupid enough not to know that a long shower uses more energy, noone will reduce usage.

Actually, what has changed our consumption chez Hath is not using high-drain appliances at the same time (iron, dishwasher, tumble dryer, kettle, oven, etc). Since mains electricity currently can't be stored the way we use energy is at least as important as the amount we use.

Btw, egosum, I've been through some of your other questions in your sunday 19.40 post earlier in the thread, but in summary:
yes it is profit; it may have something to do with managing energy, but in a very poor way (furthering increasing inequality), and it is secondary to wanting information and control over people; no I don't think it will have that big an impact on behaviour. People's behaviour could change now, without the smart meters, if they wanted it to. The poorest people are most likely to be affected, those who have to watch every penny: rich people who never even have to worry about pounds will carry on regardless (this is what I mean by furthering inequality). Given that it is rich people who use most resources anyway, for that reason, perhaps a way of targeting them ought to be found rather than further penalising the poor.

My experience is that people who are aware of environmental issues but don't act on them don't do so because they know other people get away with bigger impacts and resent being told to, in your words, 'subsidise' the rich and privileged environmentally.

And its not so much that the energy supply is diminishing as our ruling oligarchy not wanting us to take up micro-generation with renewables outside the control and profit of private companies, coupled with increasing demand for energy.