[ale] [OT] Load Control Switch

[Mike Harrison]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011, Randy wrote:
> Interesting, since you're in the business, I'd like to get your take on
> the 'Big Brother' and data mining capabilities of smart meters.

Laughable. Compared to what your cell phone or google/gmail tells "Big 
Brother" about you it is background noise.

Most of the utilities can barely handle the insane amount of data to send 
out bills. So far.

The big complainers are often hiding tampered meters and "grow ops".

I saw a "smart meter" a month ago that had a car alarm siamesed into it.
Inside the house they would click the car alarm remote, and flip on the 
grow lights and air conditioners....  Toronto Hydro estimates 3 million 
(Canadian) is lost every year to grow ops. They even have had entities tap 
substations (medium voltage) to power grow ops, install transformers.... 
etc..  Much harder to do on a "smart grid" where it should all add up
to what is billed minus tecnical losses (< 2% usually)

Does anyone really care that my dishwasher runs automagically at 1am?

You can tell whether I am home and up from miles and miles away with
a cheap telescope or binoculars.. Or many many other ways.