Do 'smart' electricity meters involve hidden dangers?

I'm alarmed to read an article from last month about problems emerging in Australia related to the use of so-called 'smart' electricity meters.

An explosive investigation into the massive mistakes being made with power bills reveals serious flaws that affect nearly every electricity user.

A whistleblower has told how his his power company offered to pay him off when he uncovered issues with their smart meter billing, sparking calls for a national inquiry.

Australia's Energy bosses have reason to be concerned, as one man's discoveries are about to become public knowledge.

Evidence of serious systemic billing errors affecting Australia's largest power company Origin Energy have come to light - resulting in overcharging and usage mistakes as high as 200 per cent.

. . .

With a Bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering, a Master's in digital communication, a Doctorate in computer science and a stint as a forensic software analyst, [Dr.] Jayasooriah is the last person a company would want ‘questioning’ their business.

But Origin had little choice, and having suspected his bills were corrupt, Jayasooriah asked the Energy Ombudsman to review them. This is when cracks began to appear for Origin.

On the 16th of April a senior investigator with the Energy Ombudsman's office emailed Jayasooriah to ‘acknowledge the possibility of error’, confirming the bill was incorrect. However when Origin tried to correct it, they couldn't.

“They have tried to bill me three times, and they have given me three different figures,” he said.

For the same period he was billed for $460.08, $442.96, and $579 – not knowing if any of the amounts were actually correct.

Nor, it seems, does Origin or the Ombudsman.

. . .

... when Jayasooriah finally got a hold of ... consumption data, he uncovered information that may rock the foundations upon which our bills are constructed.

“They have given me something that is impossible to happen from a technical perspective.”

According to his calculations the company is suggesting he used more energy than he was actually supplied.

Origin claim the data comes from distributor Ausgrid. Ausgrid and Origin claim usage data is not fiddled with, and yet every time Origin issue Jayasooriah with a new bill, his usage information changes. In some cases by more than 300 per cent.

David Levy is an associate professor in electronic engineering at Sydney University. He acknowledges these mistakes could affect everyone with interval or smart meters.

“It means that there's some error in the processing or in the capturing of the data, which applies broadly to all users of such meters,” he said.

“It suggests that there is probably broader implications.”

There's more at the link.

If problems like that are affecting so many in Australia, what's the betting that such problems are equally prevalent here in the USA? I understand that already, up to 25% of retail customers have been switched by their power suppliers to the new 'smart' meters (whether they liked it or not). I'd be very interested indeed to see an investigation into whether some of them are experiencing similar problems.

Another problem with 'smart' meters is that they allow the power company to meddle with the settings of modern appliances in your home. They may not even bother to tell you that they're doing it! MIT's Technology Review reports:

If you bought a major appliance in the last three years, odds are it was "smart," even if you didn't know it. Meaning: it probably contains a wireless radio that can broadcast and transmit over a small personal area network, sending out information about a device's status and energy use, as well as receiving commands that alter its behavior.

Many appliances that don't even announce they have this capability are equipped with it, says Mike Beyerle, an engineer at GE whom I recently interviewed about GE's coming Nucleus home energy management system.

"We want to build up a base before we make a big deal out of it," says Beyerle.

It's an intriguing twist on the old business maxim "under-promise, over-deliver." In this case, manufacturers aren't even telling consumers what their devices are capable of because, in part, those abilities are useless without an energy management hub like GE's Nucleus or a utility company's smart meter.

. . .

Once a device is hooked up to an energy management system, things get interesting. Did you realize, for example, that your refrigerator's ice maker's defrost cycle can be shifted to another time of day by your utility in order to drive down power use during times of peak demand?

Ditto your clothes dryer. If a user is signed up for a "demand response" program in which they agree to have their energy consumption remotely reduced by a utility in exchange for a lower bill, various elements of a dryer can be shut down. For example, it might be set to dry at a lower heat but for longer, allowing the same level of drying but with less energy consumed.

Again, more at the link.

Hmm. I don't want to receive power bills of dubious accuracy. Still less do I want my power company messing with the settings of my domestic appliances. (What's the possibility of such fiddling causing 'brownout'-type damage to an appliance? I don't know . . . but I bet the odds are rather less than zero, and I bet twice as much that if they do suffer such damage, the power company will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying for repair or replacement of the appliance[s] concerned!)

I think I'll avoid 'smart' meters as long as I possibly can. They may be great from the power company's point of view, but they don't seem nearly so great from my perspective.

Peter