Smart meter technology tradeoffs

Smart meters have become a matter of concern for many populations, although the technology is as always politically neutral. The focus on electricity rather than all metered services, water, gas and electricity is one aspect of this public concern. The heavy emphasis on Smart Grids, overall energy supply stability [1] and the extension of control into the home by power generators, allied to poor communications by governments and power generators in a range of countries have led to an increasingly well founded series of problems: 1. Asymmetries in power between consumer and supplier 2. Privacy issues [2, 3] 3. Data ownership issues 4. And, largely due to limited communications and thus community confidence, concerns over RF radiation effects [4]. The paper examines some of the user-side issues in context, and the imbalances between industry and consumer, how these have been addressed to date, and ways forward.