Smart Grid, Smart Spam, and Smart Burglars

In today’s economy, everyone is trying to save a few dollars. Combined with the growing interest to “Go Green,” there has been an increasing demand to implement “Smart Grid” technology into homes across America. A Smart Grid system “delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency.” The advantages to the Smart Grid seem endless, “Smart Grid means appliances will work in electric harmony: Icemakers will operate only when the washing machine isn't, TVs will shut off when viewers leave the room, and so on.”

With all of these advantages, why hasn’t this been implemented yet? Imagine a new type of computer-savvy burglar hacks into the Smart Grid system and steals your electricity usage data. This “smart burglar” now knows that all the lights in your house go off during the weekdays, at 7 a.m., and come back on at 6 p.m. He also knows that every Saturday this Fall, you have been out of the house when N.C. State is playing football. These smart burglars could study your work and social habits (and even your neighbors) based solely on your electricity usage, therefore, allowing them to efficiently burglarize you with a minimal chance of getting caught. Further, “[t]ests have shown that a hacker can break into the system . . . [and] once in the system, a hacker could gain control of thousands, even millions, of meters and shut them off simultaneously. A hacker also might be able to dramatically increase or decrease the demand for power, disrupting the load balance on the local power grid and causing a blackout.” These are just a few of the privacy concerns that advocates for Smart Grid have been trying to fight recently.

Smart burglars could study your habits
based solely on your electricity usage,
allowing them to efficiently burglarize you
with a minimal chance of getting caught.

A Smart Grid system plans to incorporate a data storage system that will be capable of storing hundreds of petabytes of data. “Pacific Gas & Electric of California says it plans to collect 170 megabytes of data per smart meter, per year.” With all of this data being stored, a myriad of privacy questions remain to be answered: Who owns all of this data? Do you own the data about your personal energy use? Who gets access to this data?

If other people had access to your information, say a travel agency, they could send you vacation brochures every March, knowing that for the past three years, you have gone on vacation in April. Advertising companies would hire data analysts to study your data usage and send directed advertisements to you: “smart spam.” What if the police had access to this information? “Law enforcement officials might use this information against us ("Where were you last night? Home watching TV? That's not what the power company says . . . ”).”

Smart Grid technology is capable of saving both energy and money on a very large scale once widely implemented in homes and businesses around the world. Recognizing the privacy concerns is the first step towards making sure the technology will work for its intended purpose and not be abused.