Andrew Donoghue writes in eWeek Europe about the Government’s Smart Meter initiative, which would see every home electronically submit electricity meter readings to a central database every 30 minutes:

Current estimates of the smart meter elements of the project are around £3.6 billion over the next 20 years, which seem hopelessly out of whack. The ID Card project – which stalled halfway through – spiralled to more than £5 billion. And that was just about giving everyone a small bit of plastic with some database tech to support. Smart meters and the associated grid overhaul will be in another league altogether in terms of scale. Potentially one or two wireless devices installed in every home in the UK, capable of talking not only to the utilities smart grid infrastructure but to the so-called “In-Home Display” (which lets consumers see what they are consuming) as well as electrical devices in the home. Don’t let anyone tell you this is not a massive undertaking.

There is obviously the issue of how much consumers can expect to save. It goes without saying that utilities fully expect to make “efficiencies” by being able to sack meter-readers, for example, and do everything remotely. But will more granular information really translate into smaller bills for energy consumers? In the US, where the rollout is accelerating due to finite availability of the government funding to support it, there have been reports that smart meter users are actually finding their bills going up. Consumers might have more accurate information on what they are using – but so do the utilities, and some are putting this information to good effect.

And the comparisons with ID Cards don’t stop at cost projections. Security and privacy are also a fundamental issue. The government is taking pains to make sure there is a public consultation on the process, to make sure that it doesn’t feel like this is simply all about streaming information from utilities to consumers homes. But the aggressive timetable for the project has pushed some experts – commentating on similarly tight deadlines in the US – to postulate that security and privacy will take a back-seat to rolling-out the devices as fast as possible. Get them out there and worry about the other stuff later.

This entry was posted by andrew on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 09:17 and is filed under Database state, Neutral, UK News Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.