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Smart Grid Advocates Need to Think Hard about Privacy

Recently, we've run a couple of articles illustrating how Japanese electronics firms are using sensors to detect people, all in the name energy efficiency. Panasonic has a hot water heater which uses a "human presence sensor" to detect if anyone is in the bathroom or not (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090409/168569/). If someone enters the bathroom, the hot water heater will then reheat the bath water, rather then keeping it hot all the time. Fujitsu and other manufacturers are doing much the same thing with air conditioners (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090116/164127/).

These are laudable applications of sensor technology, but of course, once you have these sorts of sensors in your domicile, well now your home essentially can be Big Brother. I'm sure the manufacturers of these devices have considered privacy, and if you were to ask them about the issue, one thing they may say is the devices aren't networked so the information won't get off the devices.

Well, that's about to end. I've just come back from a couple of days of listening to folks waxing lyrically about all the benefits of "smart grids." Basically, the idea behind smart grids is to use software and 2 way communications technology to allow most any device connected to the electric grid to use information coming from the grid. One of the key thoughts is to use this sort of information to encourage energy conversation by consumers. Again, a laudable goal, but think "2 way" and the devices mentioned at the top of this blog. Now they're networked and the electrical company could have access to all your energy usage data. It wouldn't be too hard to look up the ID of the air conditioner, note it is a model which has a human presence detector and track the power spikes….

The power company probably has little incentive for misusing this sort of data, but a criminal working for the company might. These sorts of scenarios are likely to give a lot of consumers a shiver of fright and deliver a pretty large backlash as they begin to understand the implications of smart grids. If the utilities want to go forward with this technology, they really will need to implement programs which will give consumers some measure of trust that their privacy won't be violated. Otherwise, consumers won't accept smart grids or you'll see an equivalent of the HIPAA privacy standards for smart grids, which may not be a bad thing.

Posted by Phillip Keys : 09:42 AM | Comments (0)