No you can’t. They don’t know if you have generation or battery capabilities, even if they detect generation capabilities they don’t know how much.

With that in mind what could they “infer”?

I go weeks without triggering a single bit of usage on my meter. I bet you they aren’t thinking: this guy is mining heaps of crypto.

Power consumption correlated with commercial breaks tells you what show somebody is watching. Power consumption correlated with 9-5 tells you if somebody is working from home. Power consumption correlated with a specific time in the morning tells you when somebody wakes up and subsequently turns the heat on. Lower power consumption over several days tells you when somebody is on vacation.

Are these relatively minor invasions of privacy compared to what advertising companies perform? Yes. But that's no reason to pretend that they aren't privacy-hostile moves on their own.

This is conspiracy theory territory. You <100wh tv isn’t going to show a anything on your power meter during a commercial break.

Thermostat heating ruin your wake up time theories.

And you avoided my actual point: a battery and solar/wind hides all of this,

Yes, they absolutely can. Like with any surveillance technology, there are things you can do to obfuscate your patterns, but that doesn't mean that a broad rollout of the technology won't have a negative privacy impact on most customers.

It’s not obfuscation, if you are concerned about privacy. You can completely hide your usage patterns with a battery or solar/wind generation.

Are you honesty making the point that: knowing you used 5 units of power in 1 month (where someone has to walk onto your property and read a number, as is the case in most dumb metered scenarios) is less of a privacy concern than knowing you used .3 of unit of power in the last 15 minutes (without needing to walk onto your property).

What am I missing?

> knowing you used 5 units of power in 1 month (where someone has to walk onto your property and read a number, as is the case in most dumb metered scenarios) is less of a privacy concern than knowing you used .3 of unit of power in the last 15 minutes (without needing to walk onto your property).

Personally, I think so for most people. But that depends on how much privacy your property provides from pedestrians and where your meter is located.

However, that is orthogonal to the debate since there are other options. Some places allow self reporting and Automated Meter Reading can be done without a smart meter that reports live power usage.

I am unsure why you are so vested in arguing that nobody has a legitimate reason to be concerned about this. It is fine if it doesn't bother you, but it is really necessary to paint those with different concerns as irrational?

no, it’s always worth pointing out irrational reasoning though.

There are clear benefits to real-time monitoring of power. So far I’ve only heard made up, theoretical, what if, privacy concerns.

> no, it’s always worth pointing out irrational reasoning though.

You haven't done that though. You've made accusations of irrationality without ever once backing them up.

> So far I’ve only heard made up, theoretical, what if, privacy concerns.

I think engineers have am ethical duty to consider "theoretical" privacy concerns when they are working on new technology.

Given the history of data mining and brokerage in the US, I would be willing to make significant bets that, (in the absence of a new law being passed to prohibit it,) consumer power usage patterns from smart meters will be sold to data brokers. Pretending this isn't going to happen belies either your knowledge of the existing markets for data or your own rationality.

Irrational premise: smart meters have privacy concerns over normal meters.

Me: how so, there is way too much noise (generation and storage) to get signal (usage correlation). In real life smart meters allow for all sorts of benefits/innovation (time of use charges, time off user feed in)

You: you haven’t said anything, just wild accusations of irrationality. Privacy is a concern, data harvesting!!! Pretending this isn’t going to happen is crazy.

Wtf? Smart meters exist, and this hasn’t happened. Show me one instance. Time of use charges are a thing, look them up. Using electrical usage data to gather private information is not a thing. Look that up too.

I think it's only a matter of degree. And at every level someone can complain. So where do you draw the line?

Watching a meter spin or reading it once a month you can tell if someone is on vacation. Isn't that equally private and personal information?

It is a matter of degree, but that degree is not small. Anytime you decrease the interval, you need to justify the commensurate loss of privacy. You can't just handwave away these concerns like posters in this thread are doing.

A rough inference of which months might involve vacations (data about which is probably already being sold from other sources) is far less invasive than a daily record of your sleep cycle.

With the lack of privacy laws in the US, it is pretty much a given that this data will be sold as soon as the private utility companies in the US start collecting it.

...You say from your personal wiretapping device.

Which I have the ability to choose when/if I am survieled by by leaving it at home or throwing it in a river.

You can turn your power off too whenever you like.

You can also bill users for peak usage times when electricity is expensive or requires falling back on non-renewable resources for production with hourly data.

I can think of a number of ways to do that that preserve privacy far better than real-time reporting of power usage.

How can you charge time of use without collecting time of use data?

Do you carry a mobile phone. If so, you have bigger privacy problems than how much power you use per minute.

That is a trade off that consumers should have the ability to evaluate and decide for themselves.