SMUD Smart Meters (Sacramento, Yuba City: how much, house, neighborhood)

[NewToCA]

Like PG&E, SMUD is currently going through an aggressive plan to replace their meters with "smart meters".

Seems like one of those ideas that is going to eventually backfire. According to the Daily Californian, bad guys can hack into the transmitted usage data and figure out usage patterns to determine when nobody is home.

Once again technology solves a problem that minimally exists, but creates more problems in their solution.

Mindy Spatt, communications director for the Utility Reform Network, said PG&E rushed into using the technology before addressing customer concerns about the affordability of installation and customer security.

"This puts an enormous amount of personal data online, and in this day in age, that makes it vulnerable," Spatt said, adding that hackers in the system can find out whether somebody is home by looking at their energy use.


PG&E Works on SmartMeter Opt-Out Plan - The Daily Californian (http://www.dailycal.org/article/112372/pg_e_works_on_smartmeter_opt-out_plan - broken link)

[Aquaboy]

Ive had a smart meter from SMUD for a few years. I toss and turn every night worrying about hackers looking at my electrical usage.
Im worried about those black helicopters watching my house, too.

[NewToCA]

SMUD requires a $127 one time charge to opt out of smart meters, plus a monthly surcharge of $39.40

Here is an article questioning the savings from Smart Meters:

Although it might sound appealing to have a “smart” digital device instead of your old analog meter, you’d better curb your enthusiasm and get a firm grip on your wallet...based on our investigation, it’s clear that smart meters won’t soon deliver the promised benefits, particularly the energy and pocketbook savings that are being touted by practically everyone who’s connected to smart meters.

Why Smart Meters Might be a Dumb Idea | Smart Meter Reviews | Consumers Digest | Consumers Digest

[KC6ZLV]

The controversy over smart meters has everything to do about that annoying American mentality wherein change or progress is bad.

The only information you can get out of a smart meter is how much electricity has been used in a given time period. It isn't enough information to determine if someone is home or not. If someone is at home running their laptop and not much else there isn't going to be much usage. If someone leaves the house with the TV, coffee pot, desktop computer, and air conditioner on a lot of usage will appear.

The only claims about savings that I've read about came from uniformed bloggers and the media. However, you can use the information to decrease energy usage. For example, if you log in to the SMUD website and notice a huge spike in usage and remember you were running the dryer to dry a pair of socks, you now know how much electricy it took to dry the, and the cost. Now that you are aware of the cost you can modify your behaviour and reduce costs. Don't dry two items and perhaps dry some things on the clothesline for free.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by KC6ZLV

The controversy over smart meters has everything to do about that annoying American mentality wherein change or progress is bad.

The only information you can get out of a smart meter is how much electricity has been used in a given time period. It isn't enough information to determine if someone is home or not. If someone is at home running their laptop and not much else there isn't going to be much usage. If someone leaves the house with the TV, coffee pot, desktop computer, and air conditioner on a lot of usage will appear.

The only claims about savings that I've read about came from uniformed bloggers and the media. However, you can use the information to decrease energy usage. For example, if you log in to the SMUD website and notice a huge spike in usage and remember you were running the dryer to dry a pair of socks, you now know how much electricy it took to dry the, and the cost. Now that you are aware of the cost you can modify your behaviour and reduce costs. Don't dry two items and perhaps dry some things on the clothesline for free.

The mere fact that anyone, including the utility, could tell when I was home and when I was not is enough to make me staunchly against the forced use of that technology. It's nobody else's damn business! It's merely another degradation of our privacy. Add the "opt out" costs and it's also akin to coercion.

[caligirlz]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The mere fact that anyone, including the utility, could tell when I was home and when I was not is enough to make me staunchly against the forced use of that technology. It's nobody else's damn business! It's merely another degradation of our privacy. Add the "opt out" costs and it's also akin to coercion.

100+

[shelato]

With the old meters there were fairly large labor expenses associated with sending a person to every house in the territory to read the meter, additionally you had expenses for when these meter readers were bitten by dogs in the backyard of the home. The new meters will get rid of this labor expense which was substantial. But there are switching costs including both the cost of the new meter itself and the cost of installing the new meter and these costs will offset initially some of the savings. Second the smart meters themselves make it easier to more precisely charge for peak usage costs. The majority in Sacramento comes from relatively cheap and clean power, either hydro or natural gas. But peak power generation are mostly diesel generators that are really expensive to operate and they really foul our air. With better metering its possible to flatten out the demand curve so that the utilities don't need to buy or add so much dirty peak power. Remember according to Lung Association we have the sixth worst air in the state and the air is the worst when its super hot and we get the inversion layers, the exact time when we probably shouldn't be using dirty diesel peak power plants.

Grouped with Sacramento, Yuba City gets bad air rap | air, report, spaethe - Appeal-Democrat

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by shelato

With the old meters there were fairly large labor expenses associated with sending a person to every house in the territory to read the meter, additionally you had expenses for when these meter readers were bitten by dogs in the backyard of the home. The new meters will get rid of this labor expense which was substantial. But there are switching costs including both the cost of the new meter itself and the cost of installing the new meter and these costs will offset initially some of the savings. Second the smart meters themselves make it easier to more precisely charge for peak usage costs. The majority in Sacramento comes from relatively cheap and clean power, either hydro or natural gas. But peak power generation are mostly diesel generators that are really expensive to operate and they really foul our air. With better metering its possible to flatten out the demand curve so that the utilities don't need to buy or add so much dirty peak power. Remember according to Lung Association we have the sixth worst air in the state and the air is the worst when its super hot and we get the inversion layers, the exact time when we probably shouldn't be using dirty diesel peak power plants.

Grouped with Sacramento, Yuba City gets bad air rap | air, report, spaethe - Appeal-Democrat

Can't disagree with anything you state, but:

- Think the personnel cost of SMUD will decrease to reflect the termination of the meter readers?

- Think the overall revenue will stay neutral, that the low demand periods will have lower rates than historically charged to offset the high charges during peak periods?

- Think that SMUD will factor in their "enhanced revenue" due to higher peak power kilowatt hour charge rates, and then lower the basic rates for the subsequent year?

- Think that "bad guys" won't eventually be able to tell when a home is occupied or not, and get patterns on when folks seem to be leaving their homes (and duration)?

[Bulldogdad]

My average year over year expendatures dropped several hundred dollars after PG&E installed the smartmeter. Nothing other than the meter that changed. Well maybe my habit of checking consumption on a daily basis and yelling at everyone to keep crap turned off now that I can track usage daily.

Also I doubt hackers are going to take this route of criminal activity when they can use their skills to hit you financially by stealing your financial info on line.

Residendial Burglaries are high risk low return jobs mostly commited by low tech, low intelligence street criminals looking to make a quick turn over for drugs.

Where this could come in handy is taking on a large scale burlary of a high income neighborhood. But then there is all the electronic security to deal with there.

Takeover robberies are better in that instance because you can control the occupants.

No I put this as a lower on the scale of risk than someone rumaging thru your garbage for info.

[KC6ZLV]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The mere fact that anyone, including the utility, could tell when I was home and when I was not is enough to make me staunchly against the forced use of that technology. It's nobody else's damn business! It's merely another degradation of our privacy. Add the "opt out" costs and it's also akin to coercion.

Again, they can't tell if you are home. They can only tell how much the electric load is at a given time. Yes, there may be a correlation between being home and electricity use, but if you were to look at my electric use hour by hour you couldn't tell if I was home or not.