Citation[]
Elias Leake Quinn, Smart Metering & Privacy: Existing Law and Competing Policies: A Report for the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (2009) (full-text).
Overview[]
The information provided by smart meters and other smart grid technologies is unique in both its depth and breadth. If its collection and dissemination goes unchecked, such information has to potential to enable significant invasions into consumer privacy. At the same time, smart grid information is useful for facilitating demand response initiatives and the development of new business models in the nascent energy management industry. In addition to the myriad uses to which this information is already put, an electric utility, the likely clearing house for this information, could bundle consumer electricity usage data into data streams in several ways, tuning their efforts to both protect consumer privacy and supply a new revenue stream to help drive the transition to a model of electricity management rather than electricity sale.