“Plans to force households to have energy smart meters installed have been shelved over health and privacy fears.”
The Daily Telegraph reports,
The Government had promised that every household would have a smart meter by 2019 in a £12 billion programme to stop gas and electricity bills being estimated.
Officials are devising plans to allow people to reject the smart meters, which communicate remotely from households to energy companies.
The move is a victory for campaign groups and backbench MPs, who raised concerns with ministers that the devices emit electromagnetic radiation 24 hours a day and cannot be turned off.
Privacy campaigners were worried that half-hourly data on energy usage collected by smart meters could give clues about people’s way of life, such as when someone is on holiday, at work or asleep.
Sources in the Department for Energy and Climate Change said the proposal was shelved to avoid the programme getting “bogged down” in lengthy legal disputes.There has been a public outcry recently about the potential health effects of smart meters in the US and Canada…
Bill Esterson, MP for Sefton Central, is now urging the Government to say whether smart meters will come with health warnings.
Charles Hendry, the energy minister, said: “We believe people will benefit from having smart meters. But we will not make them obligatory.”
“There has been a public outcry recently about the potential health effects of smart meters ”
…doing the right thing for the wrong reasons…
Once a quarter reading – fine. Not too much of a privacy issue, so long as it is securely encrypted.
1/2 hour readings – big issue.
Personally, I do want to track my usage, but that doesn’t mean letting other people track the usage.
SM won’t result in big reductions in usage. What is needed is control, particularly over heating systems, and it needs to be a brain dead solution. So when you leave the house, it knows that the house is empty, and cuts the heating. When you get near to getting back to the house, it turns it on again. eg. Your phone + GPS = your location. From that and a pattern of use, the heating is controlled.