Privacy Challenges Could Stall Smart Grid | Green Business | Reuters - 0 views
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Karl Wabst on 02 Jun 09President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure includes constructing a nationwide "smart grid" that promises to help address many of our current energy challenges. The smart grid plan offers the hope that it "will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation." While these are noble societal goals, smart grid technologies and systems as envisioned also raise concerns about individual privacy rights. Part of what makes the smart grid "smart" is its ability to know a lot about the energy-consuming devices in our homes and to monitor activity for those devices to help determine when power should be used or limited. Such knowledge is useful in regulating power consumption to use energy more efficiently. In addition to reaching into homes to regulate devices, information about usage and activities could be extracted from homes. Home energy consumption patterns could be gathered and analyzed on a room-by-room and device-by-device basis to determine which devices are used and at what time of day. Although this sort of information may not be considered terribly invasive for some, for others anything that violates the sanctity of "home" may cause tremendous concern.